దేశంలో పేదలు 5 శాతం లోపేనా? || Are only 5 percent Indians poor? ||

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దేశంలో పేదలు 5 శాతం లోపేనా? || Are only 5 percent Indians poor? ||
Has poverty really dropped to 5% in India?
NITI Aayog B.V.R. Subrahmanyam recently claimed that less than 5% of Indians now live below the poverty line. He made the claim based on the findings of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES), 2022-23. Mr. Subrahmanyam argued that the average consumption expenditure in the bottom 5% of India’s population, as estimated by the survey, is about the same as the poverty line in India, suggesting that the poverty rate in India is somewhere in the range of 0 to 5%. Has poverty really dropped to 5% in India? Surjit Bhalla and Jayati Ghosh discuss the question in a conversation moderated by Prashanth Perumal J. Edited excerpts:

The claim is that less than 5% of Indians live below the poverty line. Can you explain how the poverty line is defined in India? Does the poverty line need to be raised?

Surjit Bhalla: We are talking about the change in the level of poverty. In 2011-12, the poverty level in India, based on the same poverty line (as of today), was 12.5%. Now it’s down to 5%. If you apply the poverty line, which is today close to ₹1,500 in rural areas and ₹1,800 in urban areas according to the Tendulkar poverty line, you get something close to a poverty level of 2%. Therefore, we have moved from something like 12.5% in 2011-12 to 2% in 2022-23 and that definitely suggests that the poverty line needs to be raised around the world. Extreme poverty is what has been eliminated. We have made good progress, but we have to raise the poverty line. If we apply the World Bank’s lower- middle-income line to calculate poverty, we get a poverty level of something like 25% in rural areas and 11% in urban areas, which gives you a poverty rate of 21%. So, there is no question that the poverty line needs to be raised.
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-e...