In an affidavit to the Supreme Court today, the Planning Commission has said that Rs 25 per day at current prices “ensures the adequacy of actual private expenditure… on food, education and health”. The Planning Commission also argued that this poverty line should be used for the “public distribution services”.

This affidavit is reflective of the government’s deep lack of empathy for the poor and a perspective completely divorced from reality. It is obvious that this extremely low estimated expenditure is a threshold aimed only at artificially reducing the number of persons “below poverty line” so as to reduce government expenditure on the poor.

A few days ago, the government increased the price of petrol for the tenth time in the last year. Increasing the price of fuel, not only affects middle-class consumption but the cascading increase in prices of all commodities will also affect the poor. This at a time when inflation is already hovering at around ten percent. Coming as it does against a backdrop of spectacular scams and widespread disaffection with the state, this further underlines the indifference of the government to the marginalized.

If India cannot provide its people with adequate resources to meet their basic needs, it will cripple their full participation in the economy. In a series of anti-poor decisions, the Indian government has chosen to ignore its commitment to provide minimum needs to the poorest of its people.

Aruna Roy



In a startling affidavit to the Supreme Court today, the Planning Commission claimed that the Tendulkar rural poverty line of Rs 447 per capita per month (about Rs 15 per day) at 2004-5 prices, equivalent to roughly Rs 25 per day today after adjusting for inflation, “ensures the adequacy of actual private expenditure… on food, education and health” (Para 5).

Incidentally, in the Tendulkar poverty-line basket, the allowance for health expenditure is less (in fact, much less) than one rupee per day – barely enough to buy an aspirin. In the Tendulkar report, the alleged “adequacy” of this benchmark is based on a wholly circular argument.* Roughly speaking, one rupee per day is the “median expenditure” on health, that is, the level of expenditure such that half of the population spends less than that on health. How this benchmark can be interpreted as “adequacy” is not explained.

Similar circular arguments are used to conclude that “the proposed poverty lines have been validated by checking the adequacy [sic] of actual private expenditure per capita near the poverty lines on food, education and health by comparing them with normative [sic] expenditures consistent with nutritional, educational and health outcomes” (Tendulkar Report, p. 2, quoted in approval in the Planning Commission’s affidavit ).

In the same affidavit, the Planning Commission pleads for the continued use of this poverty line “for the public distribution services”.

Jean Dreze

Earn less than Rs 31 a day to be called poor: Plan panel

The planning commission submitted an affidavit on Tuesday with the revised cap for poverty in urban area - and fixed it at an income of Rs 31 per day.  The poor in rural areas will have to earn less than Rs 25 to stay poor.

The revision comes after the plan panel received flak from activists and intellectuals for having suggested that the urban poor's daily income would be less than Rs 20 a day.

The planning commission affidavit says that the revision has been made basing on the figures proposed by the Tendulkar Committee in 2004-05 after adjusting for the increase in prices of goods and services since then. NSSO data has also been incorporated in the calculation.

The affidavit is attached below.