Poverty will be eliminated in 8 years, says plan panel

The country’s top advisory body, the Planning Commission has claimed that the country would be poverty free by the year 2020 or by the end of the 13th five year plan (2021-22). Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 24, 2012, 23:10:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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If the Planning Commission is to be believed, the next eight years may be all it would take for India to achieve something it could not manage in 64 years since Independence. According to the country’s top advisory body, the country would be able to eliminate poverty by 2020.

The commission made this submission before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, leaving it aghast. “The committee is at a loss to understand as to how the target for poverty elimination can be achieved on a recomputed higher estimate,” the committee, headed by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha, said.

The plan panel had set the target for poverty elimination at 2020 or the end of 13th Five Year Plan (2021-22), based on estimates of the Lakdawala Committee.

As per its 2004-05 data, the Lakdawala Committee had pegged the estimate of poor Indians at 27.5%. However, the planning commission later adopted the Suresh Tendulkar methodology, which estimated that 37.5% of Indians were poor as per 2004-05 consumer expenditure data.

As per the 2009-10 data, the panel had estimated that poverty has come down to 29.8%, a dip of 7.4%. The figure raised an adverse reaction, with many stating that the poverty line was unrealistic. Eventually, the government constituted another expert group for estimating poverty.

It was in the midst of this controversy that the Planning Commission pegged 2020 as the target year for elimination of poverty.

Expressing its “surprise”, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance asked the commission to make more rigorous efforts to ensure that the target was met.

Other concerns raised by standing committee:

Govt told to address UIDAI Bill concerns

The Parliamentary Standing Committee has expressed anguish over how the government was continuing with the UID or Aadhaar number scheme without legislative approval. Recalling its recommendations on the unacceptability of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Bill, the committee urged the central government to address the issues raised by it immediately.

‘Plan Panel hardly serious in approach’

The Parliamentary Standing Committee observed that the Planning Commission was not “serious in its approach” for evaluating its performance and redefining its role to make it more relevant and effective.

It has asked the central government to appoint an expert group to evaluate the performance of the Planning Commission and redefine its role at the earliest.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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