The Planning Commission is considering a target of reducing poverty by 10 percentage points to less than 20 per cent of the population by 2016-17 (the terminal year of the 12th five-year Plan), compared to the 11th Plan.
For the 11th five-year Plan (2007-12), too, the commission had set a target of a 10 percentage point drop in poverty.
“I believe we will certainly target a substantial reduction. We need a little more work to get to that. Last time (for the 11th Plan), we had said 10 per cent. I think it is a pretty good target. This would mean two per cent declines every year, during the 12th Plan period,” Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told reporters on the sidelines of a conference of state planning boards and departments.
Earlier, the commission was criticised for pegging the poverty line cut-off at Rs 28.65 per capita daily consumption for urban areas. For rural areas, the cut-off was kept at Rs 22.42. These were based on the recommendations of the Tendulkar committee. Based on the panel’s methodology, the commission had also pegged the poverty ratio for 2009-10 at 29.8 per cent, down from 37.2 per cent in 2004-05.
According to that data, the annual rate of decline in poverty between 2004-05 and 2009-10 was 1.5 per cent, while for the period between 1993-94 and 2004-05, it was 0.7 per cent.
In May, the Planning Commission had formed an expert group headed by economist C Rangarajan to review the Tendulkar committee’s methodology for estimating poverty.
The approach paper for the 12th Plan had mentioned scaling down the average annual growth rate of nine per cent during the Plan period.
“It is not possible to think of an average of nine per cent. I think somewhere between eight and 8.5 per cent is feasible...When I say feasible, I mean that would require major effort. If you don’t do that, there is no God-given right to grow at eight per cent," Ahluwalia had said yesterday.
