Who are the poor?

Identifying the poor and measuring the poverty is a contentious issue. Poverty line is not a sacred line. At best, it indicates how far the government wishes to support people with basic entitlement. Down To Earth attempts to give perspective to the current debate on poverty

 
Published: Monday 26 September 2011

OVERVIEW
 
Poverty line delinked from food and other entitlements given to the poor
Government to wait for results of socio-economic caste census to decide parameters on who should be covered under social welfare programmes
Who are the poor?
India's poverty line finally makes headlines. Do a rapid archival search of newspapers, at least of the past 20 years, and one finds that the poverty line never made it to the front pages. In post television boom, it never featured on prime time.
   
NEWS
 
Poverty level will increase if health expenditure included
India's poverty level will go up by 3.6 per cent in rural areas and 2.9 per cent in urban areas if people's expenditure on health is factored in while measuring poverty.
 
   
ANALYSIS
 
Inheritance of loss
Poverty is becoming hereditary in India, at least for a sizeable population. That is the conclusion derived from a three-decade tracking of poor households in rural India.
 
GDP ignores cost to the environment
At a time when courts hog headlines, this was a conspicuous slip. About two months ago, the Uttarakhand High Court admitted a public interest petition on making gross environmental productivity a co-indicator of the state of the economy along with the standard gross domestic product (GDP).
   
ARCHIVES
 
DTE Reports on Poverty
BPL's dividing line
Government undecided on criteria to identify families below poverty line
Read more  
BPL: a difficult line to draw
How to determine who is poor? A new method
Read more  
Full-scale review of poverty
What is poverty? The Planning Commission is set to undertake an exercise to find a quantifiable answer to the question.
Read more  
Grim reality of India's poverty dip
Parshit Kurmi, a daily-wage labourer in Delhi since 1991, was puzzled when he was told that the government's latest estimate had found poverty levels were coming down.
Read more  
   
   

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