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New Delhi, March 25 (IANS) Debunking the government's claim that the number of poor in India has come down, a top adviser has claimed that around 70 percent of the country's 1.2 billion population is poor, and stressed the need for a multi-dimensional assessment of poverty.
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"The government claim that poverty has come down is not valid... there is a need for a multi-dimensional assessment of poverty as around 70 percent of the population is poor," National Advisory Council member N.C. Saxena told IANS in an interview.
According to Saxena, the various poverty estimates the government relies on to assess the impact of developmental schemes are faulty as they fail to factor in the lack of nutritional diet, sanitation, drinking water, healthcare and educational facilities available to the people.
The former bureaucrat, who now is part of the NAC that reports to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, claimed that not only the National Sample Survey Organisation data is faulty, the ongoing Socio-Economic and Caste Census, which is expected to throw up the latest poverty estimates, is highly flawed.
"The NSSO data is unreliable and the SECC is highly flawed," said Saxena.
The National Advisory Council (NAC) was set up as an interface with civil society. The NAC provides policy and legislative inputs to the government with special focus on social policy and the rights of disadvantaged groups.
After the government faced flak over its latest poverty estimates, according to which anyone earning over Rs.28 per day in urban areas and Rs.26 per day in rural areas is not poor, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said a multi-layered approach is required to assess poverty as the widely accepted Tendulkar committee report "is not all inclusive".
The government now plans to set up another expert panel to devise a new methodology to assess poverty levels in the country, said the prime minister.
The government recently revised its poverty estimates from earlier Rs.32 per day in urban areas and Rs.26 per day in rural areas based on 2011 prices, to the current estimate which is based on 2009 prices.
Using the Tendulkar panel report, the Planning Commission pegged poverty at 37.5 percent of the population.
Saxena said in reality out of about 200 centrally sponsored schemes, only 5 or 6 are linked to the poverty estimates, pegged at 37.5 percent by the Planning Commission.
Having a realistic assessment of poverty in not only crucial for the government to ensure that around Rs.80,000 crore that it spends on various welfare schemes annually reaches only the genuinely poor, it is also important for the United Progressive Alliance which hopes to roll out the ambitious National Food Security Bill, which aims to provide subsidised rations to around 65 percent of the 1.2 billion population some time next year
comments...
I am in full agreement with NC Saxena. The estimates have been prepared by those sitting smugly in airconditioned offices of the national capital who have hardly taken the trouble of traversing the rural areas with pot-holed unpaved roads dotted on both sides with hovels and mud houses of the poor.These are the people in New Delhi who have read about poverty in books only and their thinking is conditioned by the reports of highly -paid academicians and armchair researchers from foreign universities and multinational corporations .I was not surprized when the government estimates created a furore in the Pariament and a prominent national leader with grassroots experience whose party has romped home with a resounding victory in the recent elections in the most populous state called for the sacking of the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission.
It is a pity that after so many committees in the past, another Expert Committee has been announced, even though the issue has been dogging the government for years.No New Delhi-based committee divorced from the ground realities will command credibility.
A possible way out, in my opinion , would be to constitute a fact-finding compact mission for each of the states composed of central/state goverments' and civil society representatives who should visit the poorest and remotest parts of the state, see the ground realities, talk to the local poorest people and then submit their reports. Taken seriously, the whole exercise should not take more than 2-3 months. Given the importance of the issue, already delayed solution and the heat it has generated, time and money expended on this approach would be worthwhile. It is only then that the estimates would command respectability and general acceptance.
Ramadhar , IAS (retired), Former Chairman, Bihar State Farmers Commission , Patna
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