Meet The 64 Cent Poverty Expert!!

the Planning Commission declared that people spending Rs 32 (64 cents) in cities or Rs 26 (52 cents) in the villages can not be considered poor and acknowledged that with this yardstick there are 407.4 million (33%) poor in India.

   

                                                                       the 64 percent poverty expert in India   

                                                                                         

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It is a proof that Indian politicians and policy makers live totally divorced from the ground reality. Had any one of them ever tried to live on USD 0.64 per day expenditure even in their wildest dreams? It is a cruel joke and mockery of Indian poor who are resigned to be ruled by people who go to Western universities to understand poverty in India! In fact, using any monetary value as poverty line is fraught with dangers of artificiality. 

The World Bank uses 1.25 dollars a day as poverty line and the Asian Development Bank puts it at 1.35 dollars. Needless to say each benchmark gives a different estimate of the number of poor. The higher the benchmark is the higher is the proportion of people counted as poor. A 2 dollar a day poverty line benchmark makes almost three-fourth Indians poor. Therefore, such an exercise is nothing but a number game meant for generating arguments and counter-arguments. 

Income based poverty lines can tell nothing about different forms of deprivations and sufferings poor go through. Poverty entails a denial of a range of basic material needs such as nutrition, safe drinking water, shelter, healthcare, education, etc. Therefore, poverty must be seen beyond income and composite poverty measures provide better understanding of the nature of poverty – at local, regional, national, and world level.