The public outrage over the Planning Commissions BPL affidavit at the Supreme Court in September this year,estimating that a person spending Rs 965 a month (Rs 32 a day) in urban areas and Rs 781 a month (Rs 26 a day) in rural areas will not be considered poor,has forced the government to review once again the entire methodology for arriving at the poverty line. According to Minister of State for Planning,Science and Technology Ashwani Kumar,a new committee of experts will be set up soon to decide on a comprehensive criterion for identifying the BPL families. The committees quest will be to arrive at the most credible methodology to estimate poverty in consultation with states and other stakeholders,he said in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha. When contacted,Planning Commission officials told The Indian Express that the Tendulkar-chaired expert groups recommendations were criticised for not adopting a multi-dimensional approach to measuring poverty. The group that submitted its report in December 2009 had estimated the poverty lines for 2004-05 at a per capita per month consumption expenditure of Rs 578.80 in urban areas and Rs 446.68 in rural areas. In an affidavit filed in the apex court,the Plan panel updated these in September 2011 to Rs 965 and Rs 781 for urban and rural areas,respectively. The officials said while the Tendulkar-led expert group did take into account a few indicators without really restricting itself to calorific value,there has been wide-ranging opinion that a more objective view was needed. Moreover,the estimates are not in sync with the identification of families that is separately undertaken by the ministries of rural development and urban development. In its report,the Tendulkar expert group that was set up in December 2005,said that the poverty lines were validated by checking the adequacy of actual private expenditure per capital near the poverty lines on food,education and health. These were then compared with normative spends consistent with nutritional,educational and health outcomes. The Planning Commission is the nodal agency for estimating poverty lines and ratios at the national and state levels. These are based on the large sample surveys on household consumer expenditure conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). The NSSO surveys are conducted every five years and the results are now available for 2004-05 (based on Tendulkar expert group recommendations) and for 2009-10,as updated by the Plan panel. Following the outrage,Montek Singh Ahluwalia,Deputy Chairman,Planning Commission and Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh had in October first week said the poverty estimates based on the Plan panels methodology would not be used to impose any ceiling on the number of households to be included under different government programmes and schemes.
