The Planning Commission's declaration that the number of poor in India has fallen to 22% of the population in the last seven years has evoked strong protests from the opposition and from an important ally, Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party or NCP.
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Official data released on Tuesday say that the percentage of Indians living below the poverty line has fallen to 22 percent in 2011-12 from 37 per cent in 2004-05, a period of just seven years. The figures have been dismissed by critics as deeply flawed and by the BJP as "a cruel joke on the country" to benefit in the national elections, due by May, when the party will seek a third consecutive term.
The headline of the controversy, however, lies in the Planning Commission's declaration that anyone who spends more than Rs. 33.33 in a day in urban areas and Rs. 27.20 a day in rural areas is above the poverty line.
The Commission has stuck to an earlier controversial method of calculating poverty figures. It had in October 2011 impelled a heated national debate by saying anyone who spends more than Rs. 32 per day in urban areas is not poor, a theory that was criticised across the political spectrum as being unrealistic and unmindful of realities like raging inflation.
According to the World Bank, nearly 70 percent of India's population lives on less than $2 or about Rs. 120 a day - often cited as the baseline for poverty in the country.
Poverty estimates are used to determine public access to welfare benefits such as subsidised fuel.
Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi has asked states to start rolling out a massive new Food Security programme next month, which will be the world's largest in providing highly subsidized wheat and rice to poor families. "State governments can use the updated data for identifying beneficiaries," Food Minister KV Thomas said, though the food security scheme will cover nearly 800 million people, far more than the 270 million people identified as below the poverty line.
The Planning Commission has noted that the poverty numbers could be revised upward based on findings of a committee led by top government adviser C Rangarajan which is reviewing the methodology for measuring poverty and is due to report in 2014.
The committee was set up in 2011 to reassess the way of estimating the number of poor after critics accused the government of trying to massage poverty figures down for political gain. But even if the percentage of poor increases, the "rate of decline (between 2004-05 and 2011-12) would be similar", the committee said.
While economic growth slowed last year to a decade low of five percent, the government argues near double-digit expansion in previous years has driven a dramatic reduction in poverty in the country of 1.2 billion people.
The BJP's opposition to the new data may be prompted partly by the results which show Congress states like Rajasthan bettering Gujarat in alleviating poverty.
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