Suresh Tendulkar

Poverty in Pragati

As promised, I have an updated and expanded version of my post on The Poverty Numbers at Pragati. From my blog post, I have subtracted some things in the interest of space – the discussion on the recall period being most prominent. More importantly, I have added some things, so you should read the Pragati piece even if you’ve read my post.

I have referred to some papers in the Pragati article. Here are the original links to those:

  • The Tendulkar Report on the methodology on estimation of poverty.  Suresh Tendulkar, by the way, was an excellent free market economist.
  • Angus Deaton’s 2008 paper on why Indians are consuming fewer calories is here (PDF link). Look at pages 53 onwards for discussion on the calorie decline.
  • Deaton’s other paper on how the divergence between the NSS data and the CPI affected poverty numbers is here.
  • All of Deaton’s work on poverty can be viewed here.

The Scrap Over Poverty Statistics

What should we make of the latest scrap over the Tendulkar committee report? Here are some thoughts.

 Poverty isn’t a binary variable. There is no switch that, when turned on, defines a household as poor vs.  non-poor.  There are various degrees of deprivation, and we have differing intuitions about at what level of deprivation we should classify a family as poor. Part of the root of the outrage over the seemingly low household income (Rs. 26 per day per person in villages to Rs. 32 per person per day in cities)  comes from the fact that our intuition about what constitutes poverty has changed.

 My uncle started his career after completing his graduation in the mid-70s in Bombay’s weather office. He was single and lived alone then, but he’d send part of his salary home to his family. Towards the end of the month, his money would run out, and the last few days of the month, he’d be able to cook and eat only one meal a day.

 Then, as now, if you were a graduate and you were earning an entry level salary in a government firm, you would be categorized into the middle-class – lower middle-class to be sure, but middle-class nonetheless. When did you last hear of a middle-class person lacking for food in India? But that’s how things were till the 70s, and my uncle’s situation wouldn’t excite comment then.  One can only imagine the situation of the others who were poorer than my uncle.

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