The biggest scam by the UPA-II government

[The Outsider]

Shameless fecks have taken a contested definition of the poverty level to come up with a report according to which poverty levels have dropped to record new levels. The catch is that this definition is going to be discarded for better methods in a few months, hence the rush to catch votes for the elections.

NEW DELHI: The number of India's poor fell to less than a quarter of its population in 2011-12, according to a Planning Commission estimate, giving the government a reason to cheer amid the recent raft of disappointing macro economic data. The commission said on Tuesday the number of those below the poverty line declined to 21.9% of the population in 2011-12, from 29.8% in 2009-10 and 37.2% in 2004-05. The estimate, based on a survey of household consumer expenditure, showed rural poverty declined to 25.7% from 41.8% in 2004-05, while in urban areas it fell to 13.7% from 25.7%. The sharp drop was attributed to the high real growth in recent years, which raised the consumption capacity. The data showed that nearly 2 crore people were pulled out of poverty every year from 2004-05 onwards, which resulted in a sharp drop in those below the Tendulkar poverty line to 27 crore in 2011-12 from 40.7 crore in 2004-05. The national level poverty ratio is based on Suresh Tendulkar methodology, which uses the mixed reference period after National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) tabulated expenditure of about 1.2 lakh households across the country. The national poverty line has been fixed at Rs 816 per capita per month for rural areas and Rs 1,000 for urban areas. "Thus, for a family of five, the all-India poverty line in terms of consumption expenditure would amount to about 4,080 per month in rural areas and 5,000 per month in urban areas," the Planning Commission said. The government has set up a committee under C Rangarajan to review the Tendulkar methodology that has been criticised in the past for fixing poverty lines that were too low at 22.42 per person in rural areas and 28.65 in urban areas. "Since the data from the NSS (National Sample Survey) 68th round (2011-12) of household consumer expenditure survey is now available, and the Rangarajan committee recommendation will only be available a year later, the Planning Commission has updated the poverty estimates for the year 2011-12 as per the methodology recommended by Tendulkar committee," the Planning Commission said in a release. The release showed there would still be a decline in the poverty rates from 2004-05 levels even if a method other than the Tendulkar methodology was used to determine the poverty line. Data from the survey in 2009-10 has not been used for comparison as the year was a drought year. In 2004-05, 37.2% of the country's population was below the poverty line with ratios for rural and urban areas at 41.8% and 25.7%. The rate of decline was 0.74% per annum during the 11-year period from 1993-94 to 2004-05. Uttar Pradesh had the highest number of poor people at 598.19 lakh, which is 29.4% of the state's total population followed by Bihar at 358.15 lakh (33.7%), Madhya Pradesh at 234.06 lakh (31.6%), Maharashtra at 197.92 lakh (17.3%) and West Bengal at 184.98 lakh (19.9%). Prime minister Manmohan Singh had last week highlighted the UPA government's record in poverty reduction, contrasting with the lower fall in the NDA regime and earlier. "The percentage of population below the poverty line declined at 0.75 percentage points per year before our government came to office in 2004-05. It has fallen more than 2 percentage points per year between 2004-05 and 2011-12," Singh said at an industry association function last week.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/now-only-22-per-cent-indians-below-poverty-line-planning-commission/articleshow/21288723.cms To steal money in contracts is one thing, but playing around with lives of the poorest of the poor is just another. Intellectual dishonesty at its forefront! :hatsoff:

[dial_100]

Boy, these things are hard to understand without proper facts available. As I read PC's report, as per page 45 in their report titled "State Specific Poverty Lines, Number and Percentage of Population below Poverty Line by States - 2004-05 & 2009-10" average national poverty line is at Rs 673 for Rural and Rs 860 for Urban population. Now this report suggests in 2011-12 it has been only raised to 816 and 1000 to derive population below the poverty line. How can they take people for a ride? I think the same method should be used to draw the actual poverty line during the earlier years and bring out the true delta. PM should personally announce the new report on TV.

[diga]

"Thus, for a family of five, the all-India poverty line in terms of consumption expenditure would amount to about 4,080 per month in rural areas and 5,000 per month in urban areas," the Planning Commission said.

India has gone from 2 child nation to 3 child nation??? Believe me, in my area lots of families live with about 5000 per month or even lesser.. and they hardly complain.

[The Outsider]

How can they take people for a ride? I think the same method should be used to draw the actual poverty line during the earlier years and bring out the true delta. PM should personally announce the new report on TV.

PM will do jack*****. If there was any sincere effort to get the realistic numbers in public view, this sham of an exercise based on a system known to be outdated and going to be phased out, would never have been announced.

[dial_100]

Yeah I know he wont. Question now is, will EC do something about this or they will try to sweep it under the carpet?

[The Outsider]

Yeah I know he wont. Question now is' date=' will EC do something about this or they will try to sweep it under the carpet?[/quote'] EC directorates come into play only after elections have been officially announced - political parties know it and come up with this kind of nonsense well before that deadline and late enough so they can exploit mileage out of it.

[dial_100]

Yeah right. Actually this is a scam. Can court intervene if someone files a suit for misguiding people of the country by Authority as high as PMO? Now the real question is will poor of the country buy this as a fact that their state has been improved in last few years? After all, it is just a claim on the paper to prove some point. In politics, I am sure this would have been done million times. Is there any implications if it is proven otherwise? I doubt that congress would benefit from it anyway unless BJP messes it up time and again with some antics in next few months.

[bulbul]

Yeah right. Actually this is a scam. Can court intervene if someone files a suit for misguiding people of the country by Authority as high as PMO? Now the real question is will poor of the country buy this as a fact that their state has been improved in last few years? After all, it is just a claim on the paper to prove some point. In politics, I am sure this would have been done million times. Is there any implications if it is proven otherwise? I doubt that congress would benefit from it anyway unless BJP messes it up time and again with some antics in next few months.

There are bigger scams happened , but nothing going to happen in this country , people move on.

[The Outsider]

Yeah right. Actually this is a scam. Can court intervene if someone files a suit for misguiding people of the country by Authority as high as PMO? Now the real question is will poor of the country buy this as a fact that their state has been improved in last few years? After all, it is just a claim on the paper to prove some point. In politics, I am sure this would have been done million times. Is there any implications if it is proven otherwise? I doubt that congress would benefit from it anyway unless BJP messes it up time and again with some antics in next few months.

Won't hold water in court, IMO because under the current definitions of poverty their numbers are correct. However, the scam is that the metric to measure poverty itself will be replaced in a few months. At that point they will make the pretense of calibrating their results for the new metric for a year, by which time elections would be over and political mileage drawn. As for buying the stuff, how many of the electorate do you think will study or understand such details? They'll listen to how UPA has drastically reduced poverty, which would be technically true, but fundamentally a scam.

[adi B]

why not wait for rangarajan committee report? the intent of the govn is mala fide

[Crookbond]

I smell a stink but can't quite point out fingers. Can someone please explain me in layman terms - before/after calculations of the poverty figures? I mean what has changed in their calculations that we see this reduction.

[Crookbond]

Never mind - I got this. The problem is the definition of poverty. The current level of poverty calculation used is approx. 25% of the recognisable level from world bank.

[Brainfade]

The US-DOL can do stuff like this with the U-3 unemployment figures. Just adjust the "labor participation" figures in the denominator, and you can make the unemployment statistics look like whatever you want.

[dial_100]

Never mind - I got this. The problem is the definition of poverty. The current level of poverty calculation used is approx. 25% of the recognisable level from world bank.

WB has Poverty line drawn at $1.25 a day. I think 50% population with this WB's PL will be shown poor. We have always lowered our definition to draw a PL.

[dial_100]

This is Congress's new growth model to counter other growth models in the country. This is a very powerful model and people should understand no one can deliver "Inclusive growth" better than congress. :hysterical:

[Crookbond]

Here is an kick-a** op-ed on this sham of a calculation. Why does UPA want to feed 67% if only 22% of India is poor? http://www.firstpost.com/economy/why-does-upa-want-to-feed-67-of-india-if-only-21-is-poor-986041.html

Poverty in India has fallen between 2004-05 and 2011-12, or so suggests data recently released by the Planning Commission. The poverty ratio was 37.2 percent in 2004-05 and fell to 21.9% by 2011-12. The Congress led United Progressive Alliance(UPA) has been quick to claim credit for this fall in poverty. The opposition parties from the left and the right have slammed the government, and questioned the numbers put out by the Planning Commission. So who is right on this occasion? The government? Or the opposition? Before we get around to answering these questions, it is first important to understand how the Planning Commission decides who is poor and who is not. A poverty line separates the poor section of the population from the non poor section. Those below the poverty line are deemed to be poor and those above it are deemed to be not poor. And what exactly is a poverty line? As S Subramanian writes in The Poverty Line “A poverty line is identified in monetary units as the level of income or consumption expenditure required in order to avoid poverty.” :WTF: kind of definition is this? Define the term using the term - recursive! :facepalm: So how is the level of income or consumption expenditure required in order to avoid poverty decided on? An essential criterion for avoiding poverty is the availability of adequate nutrition, writes Subramanian. Hence, a calorie norm is identified. The amount of money required to consume the identified number of food calories becomes the cut off point, or the poverty line. Those who consume less than that are deemed to be poor. This criteria was first clearly addressed by the Indian planners in 1979 in a Planning Commission Report of the Task Force of Minimum Needs and Effective Consumption Demand. As Subramanian writes “In identifying consumption expenditure poverty norms for India, the Task Force employed a nutritional norm of 2,435 (rounded off to 2,400) kilocalories per person per day in rural areas, and a norm of 2,095 calories (rounded off to 2,100) kilocalories per person per day in the urban areas. These were average figures based on calorie allowances recommended by a Nutrition Expert Group in 1968…The Task Force was able to come up with an ‘average’ requirement of calories for what one might call a ‘representative’ Indian, in each of the rural and urban areas of the country.” So what does this mean? It means that anyone in rural India consuming less than 2,400 kilocalories per day was deemed to be poor. For urban India this number was at 2,100 kilocalories. Through a statistical regression the total expenditure necessary to consume either 2,400 kilocalories or 2,100 kilocalories was estimated. The Tendulkar Committee formula, a new formula to estimate the poverty line, came into effect in 2009. This formula, other than considering the expenditure on food, also took expenses on education, health and clothing into account. When Professor Suresh Tendulkar changed the formula he argued that the old formula did not take into account the fact that calorie intake had dropped to 1770 kilocalories in urban areas. Despite this change the influence of the old calorie norm on the new formula is considerable, feel experts. And how much is the expenditure as per the Tendulkar Committee formula ? As the Press Note on Poverty Estimates, 2011-12, released by the Planning Commission points out “for rural areas the national poverty line…is estimated at Rs 816 per capita per month and Rs. 1,000 per capita per month in urban areas. Thus, for a family of five, the all India poverty line in terms of consumption expenditure would amount to about Rs 4,080 per month in rural areas and Rs 5,000 per month in urban areas”. Assuming 30 days in a month, this expenditure comes to Rs 27.5 per day for the rural areas and Rs 33.33 for urban areas. Hence, anyone whose expenditure per day is less than these amounts is categorised as poor. How adequate is this poverty line of Rs 27.5-Rs 33.33 per day? If one were to believe film star turned Congress politician Raj Babbar, this amount is more than enough. “Even today in Mumbai city, I can have a full meal at Rs 12. No no not vada paav. So much of rice, dal sambhar and with that some vegetables are also mixed ,” he told reporters today (i.e. 25 July 2013). Of course, this clearly proves that Babbar has not stepped onto the streets of Mumbai for a very long time. His days of struggle in the film industry having been long over. Even if we believe that one can get a meal for Rs 12 in Mumbai, eating is not the only expenditure that a man needs to incur in order to survive. Given this, it is easy to prove that the poverty line in India has been set at a very low level. There have been a spate of comments criticising this. Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh called the Planning Commission figures a cruel joke on the poor. “I would like to ask the Prime Minister and Congress president whether they could have their meal in just Rs 32(if one divides Rs 1000 by 31 days, it comes to Rs 32.25),” Chouhan said. This is something that Praful Patel of the Nationalist Congress Party, which is a part of the UPA, agreed with. “The ceiling set by them (Planning Commission) is totally wrong. In today’s time, Commission should set a new ceiling keeping in mind inflation and high cost of living. We do not agree with this data,” Patel said. Brinda Karat of the CPM said that the Planning Commission figures were “dubious” and “discredited” and added “salt to the wounds of the poor”. Similar reactions came in from other political parties as well. So, the poverty line in India is at a very low level and hence needs to be increased is a conclusion that can be easily drawn from. As NC Saxena, member of the National Advisory Council, who headed a Planning Commission panel on poverty told The Hindu “the narrow definition of poverty we have been using, where the line is really what I call a kutta-billi line; only cats and dogs can survive on it”. But raising the poverty line is not simple and has serious implications. As Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya write in India’s Tryst with Destiny “While reasonable people may differ on whether it is reasonable to further raise the poverty line, the subject is far more complex than commonly appreciated.” And why is that the case? “The dilemma in raising the poverty lines is best brought out by considering the implications of poverty lines that are significantly higher than those currently in use and are advocated by many of the current critics of the Planning Commission. Thus, for example, suppose we raise the rural poverty line to Rs 80 and the urban one to Rs 100 at 2009-10 prices. What would these lines imply?” ask Bhagwati and Panagariya. This would designate 95% of the rural population and 85% of the urban population to be poor. The impact of this would be that the money that the government spends to tackle poverty would be spread over a much larger number of people and thus would have less impact in tackling poverty. As Bhagwati and Panagariya point out “With tax revenues still relatively modest, significant redistribution in favour of the destitute requires limiting such redistributions to the bottom 40 percent or so of the population. Spreading them thinly over a vast population will give too little to the destitute to make a major dent in poverty.” Lets understand this through an example. Let us say there are 100 people. Of this 20 are deemed to be poor. The government decides to spend Rs 100 to help them. Hence, on an average each one of them benefits to the extent of Rs 5. Now lets the definition of poverty is changed and 90 out of 100 people, are deemed to be poor. The government still spends Rs 100 on them. The benefit per person comes down to a much lower Rs 1.11 (Rs 100/90). Hence, the more poor lose out at the cost of the less poor. In fact, this is not the first time such a situation has arisen. In 1962, the Perspective Planning Department (PPD) of the Planning Commission had discussed a similar dilemma. As Subramanian writes partly quoting a PPD document “’The balanced diet recommended by the Nutrition Advisory Committee together with a modest standard of consumption for other items would cost approximately Rs 35 per head (per month). But at present less than 20 percent of our population can afford it’…The implication is quite clear. A poverty line of Rs 35 per person per month would have plunged 80 per cent of the Indian population into poverty: wiser counsel advocated a more modest norm of Rs 20 per person per month.” This brought down the poverty rate to 60 percent. Hence, there is no point in pushing up the poverty line without having the resources to tackle it. If resources are limited they should be deployed to help those who need it the most. But the Congress led UPA government has done exactly the opposite by getting the President to sign on the Food Security Ordinance. The food security scheme aims at providing subsidised rice and wheat to nearly 82 crore Indians or 67 percent of the total population. This effectively means that the government thinks that 67% of the Indian population is poor and cannot afford to buy rice and wheat at market rates. But as per the current poverty line only 21.9% of the population is not getting adequate nutrition. So which is the right number? 21.9 percent or 67 percent? The Congress led UPA government needs to answer that question. It seems the government is working on a new poverty line to justify the massive expenditure that it will incur on the Food Security scheme. As The Hindu reports “economists advising the Ministry of Rural Development have told The Hindu that the exclusion criteria to be derived from the ongoing Socio-Economic and Caste Census are likely to leave out the top 35 per cent of the population while the bottom 65 per cent will be considered below poverty line.” Meanwhile, it will claim that the poverty has come down on the basis of the current poverty line and numbers put out by the Planning Commission because of the social programmes it has launched over the last few years. As the old saying goes “heads I win, tails you lose”.

[Crookbond]

Current statistics of the Plan Panel indicates that poverty in India has reduced. The estimates based on the Tendulkar Committee methodology shows that 269.7 million people in India or 21.9% of the total population are below the poverty line. On the other hand many others criticize the methodology of the poverty benchmarking. Watch RSTV discussion on the same with eminent panelists. Guests: N C Saxena (Member, National Advisory Council) ; Prof. Ravi Srivastava (Economist) ; Hukumdev Narayan Yadav (MP, BJP) ; Dr. Mihir Shah (Member, Planning Commission) ; Panini Anand (Principal Correspondent, Outlook)

4DuWHHNBnJA

[adi B]

this news came about a month ago iirc,govn were harping on this achievement and the opposition parties,some pundits were questioning this methodology`s apocryphal

[Crookbond]

^ Obviously I know it came a month ago but this is a nice discussion on Rajya Sabha TV unlike the usual scream contest that you see on Times Now etc.

[Khalpat]

^ Obviously I know it came a month ago but this is a nice discussion on Rajya Sabha TV unlike the usual scream contest that you see on Times Now etc.

Times Now discussion is literally very frustrating. I am just not sure why Arnab asks any question because he never listens the answer. In one and half hour debate on Newshour, he himself speaks for One Hour fifteen minutes.