Planning Commission says a higher poverty line will mean larger exclusion of the really poor
Facing criticism over its new criteria for poverty line, the Planning Commission has ruled out any drastic action to silence the critics, saying a higher poverty line would mean larger exclusion of the really poor. However, it said the figures were not final and would be revised according to prices, the first of which might happen as early as the end of this year.
The commission said it had not redefined the poverty line but simply updated the Suresh Tendulkar Committee’s recommendations based on the 2004-05 prices to June 2011. In its affidavit on Tuesday, the plan panel said any person earning over Rs 32 a day in urban areas and Rs 26 a day in rural areas should fall out of the purview of being considered poor.
On Thursday, the commission said no revision of the current affidavit would be filed in the court.
Such has been the spotlight on the commission that some officials said deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who is on a trip abroad, could be called back early.
With Ahluwalia abroad, members of the panel were left to fend off media queries and had been sending desperate SOS messages to the deputy chairman.
More From This Section
He said the contents of the affidavit were the contents of the Tendulkar committee report, which has been on the Planning Commission’s website for the last two years. “You can’t withdraw it now,” he said even as he tried to throw the ball in the rural development ministry’s court.
Sen said the issue was actually concerning the census for families below the poverty line (BPL) where the critieria for identifying BPL was used to find the poor. He said the court had precisely wanted to know this and it was not answered.
Asked about the indication in the affidavit that the Planning Commission would revise the numbers based on the findings of the consumer expenditure survey of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), he said: “That would take two years. The survey will end in July next year and then it wil take another year.”
Saumitra Chaudhuri, another member who drafted the affidavit, contradicted Sen. “How much do you pay your driver or domestic worker? It may be Rs 4,000 or Rs 5,000 in a city like Delhi and then you are shocked that the poverty line is Rs 31 a day,” he asks.
“However, the affidavit has a scope of giving a revised number that appears better than this. But it may be higher or lower,” Chaudhuri added. “The NSSO data based on the 2009-10 prices are already here last month and we would be revising the poverty line based on that soon. The new number may be ready by the end of the year.”
B D Virdi, advisor to the Planning Commission who filed the affidavit on behalf of the commission, said: “We have not redefined the poverty line as being said in a section of the press. What we have done is that simply updated the Tendulkar panel’s poverty line from the 2004-05 level to June 2011.”
Said Mihir Shah, member of the Planning Commission, “Entitlements under the social security schemes like the Food Security Act would be determined on the basis of the actual census and not on the current numbers.”