Rahul gets stats on poverty

The Planning Commission made a presentation to Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi on Monday on India’s revised poverty estimate and food subsidy bill.

Updated on: May 17, 2010, 23:14:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Planning Commission made a presentation to Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi on Monday on India’s revised poverty estimate and food subsidy bill.

The plan panel, in its internal meeting, had accepted Suresh Tendulkar Committee recommendation that 372 million Indians should be considered poor for the proposed National Food Security law. As of now, the official estimate of the poor in India is 275 million.

The increase of about 100 million (10 crore) in below poverty line (BPL) population is yet to be approved by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is also the panel’s chairperson. The panel has to present the new poverty estimate by end of May to the Empowered Group of Ministers on the proposed food security bill.

The panel is keen to get the Congress on board with the new poverty figures. The party had promised providing 25 kg of food grains at Rs three per kg to a BPL family, in its manifesto but Congress chief Sonia Gandhi had asked the government to provide 35 kg.

The panel’s deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia made a detailed presentation to Rahul Gandhi reportedly stating that the government can provide 35 kg of food grains at Rs 3 per kg to all poor.

The panel is also of the view that the 11.52 crore above poverty line (APL) families can be provided food grains at no-profit-no-loss price to the government. “It would mean each APL family will be entitled to get 25 kg of food grains per month,” the panel said in a presentation to EGoM earlier this month.

The presentation was made after Gandhi expressed willingness to learn about the implications of providing 35 kg of food grains to every poor in India.

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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