Govt scraps poverty line, says not close to reality

Govt junks controversial Tendulkar methodology. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 23, 2012, 02:34:45 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The controversy over number of poor in India took a new turn on Thursday when the Planning Commission junked Tendulkar methodology which was basis for the claim that 29.8% of Indians were poor.

Hit by a political storm with Mulayam Singh Yadav demanding sacking of plan panel deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia, minister of state for planning Ashwini Kumar announced scrapping of the methodology saying it was not based on existing realities.

"The government has taken a decision to set up a technical group to revise the methodology for estimating poverty in a manner consistent with the current realities," Kumar said, two days after Ahluwalia backed the Tendulkar methodology.

“In the last 8-9 years since Tendulkar committee was constituted there has been a lot of change in perception of poverty.” Kumar also announced that except subsidised ration to be provided under the proposed National Food Security law, all other entitlements could be linked with the new poverty lines to be defined.

Ahluwalia and rural development minister Jairam Ramesh had earlier said poverty line will not be linked with any entitlements provided by the Centre.

The minister said the poverty line should reflect position on the ground rather than imposing an “artificial” cap and the technical group will review the existing methodology for the same. PM Manmohan Singh decided the review in December 2011, Kumar said, but the constitution of the group has not been decided so far.

Till Tuesday, the plan panel had denied any move to review the Tendulkar methodology saying it had come into force only in 2009 and is based on expenditure for sustainable living.

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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