405 million poor in India by 2011

The number of poor in India would increase by 35 million by March 2011, a panel of Union ministers on National Food Security law has been told, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 4, 2010, 02:37:33 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The number of poor in India would increase by 35 million by March 2011, a panel of Union ministers on National Food Security law has been told.

The planning commission in a presentation to an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) last week has said that Suresh Tendulkar Committee had projected the number of poor in 2005 to be 370 million. The panel has accepted this number as India’s new poverty figure for the proposed law.

Applying the committee’s methodology to Registrar General of India’s estimated population, the plan panel has said the number of poor would be 405 million in March 2011.

Based on the poverty estimate, the panel has said the government will require 34 million tonnes of food grains annually costing the government Rs 54,000 crore in food subsidy. It would mean additional Rs 6,000 crore in subsidy as compared to the poverty figure for 2005.

In fact, it would mean no increase in the Central goevrnment’s food subsidy bill, which for the year 2010-11 has been pegged at Rs 55,000 crore.

The subsidy amount has been calculated based on an assumption that a poor person will either get six kg or every below poverty line (BPL) family will get 35 kg of food grains per month. The EGoM headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukerjee has agreed to this.

These are some of the changes EGoM has agreed after Congress President Sonia Gandhi asked the government to re-consider the approved draft law.

The plan panel has also proposed that the states should be given an option to either continue with Public Distribution System linked to Unique Identification Number or direct subsidy through smart cards.

Cheap grains

Cheap foodgrains for all may be desirable but not possible, Parliament was told on Monday by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar. Pawar said the government would go by the Plan panel’s updated estimates to ascertain the number of poor eligible for subsidised grains.

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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