Like the elephant described by the five wise men of Hindoostan, poverty in India has eluded all definitions. The government is now making yet another attempt to know who really are its poor people...
The Problem
Thirty Seven Percent.
Further, the government put an unusual caveat; that the number of poor in any state could not exceed the Planning Commission’s estimate. In other words, the state governments, who actually conduct the census, had to choose their cut-off points in such a manner that the final numbers matched the poverty estimate put out by Planning Commission. But it was difficult to get the states to comply and most of them ended up selecting more households than the Centre could handle. That tug-of-war between the states and the Centre hasn’t really ended till date.
(This story appears in the 16 July, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)