Poverty Line Research Paper

1298 Words6 Pages
ntroduction A poverty line refers has been referred to as the level of income where a person is able to afford and meet the basic necessities of life. So the poverty line basket comprises of the commodities consisting of essential food and non-food items that is required for basic sustenance of his or her life. There has been other concepts related to the poverty line namely Below Poverty Line (BPL) and the Above Poverty Line (APL). The process of determination of a poverty line and identifying its beneficiaries is extremely important as considerable proportion of the total population are entitled to enjoy the benefits of various poverty alleviation schemes being run by the government. So various expert committees has been set up by the planning…show more content…
The committee of eminent public personalities raised concerns about the scenario then and stated that since majority of the total population lived under the claws of extreme poverty so a mechanism has to be developed for its speedy eradication. This was followed by another expert group which was set up in the year 1977 under the chairmanship of Y.K Alagh. This committee was one of its kinds which introduced the concept of determining the poverty line based on the minimum nutritional requirements which was determined to be 2,400 kcals for the rural areas and 2100 kcals for the urban areas. In addition to that it used the age-sex activity specific recommended dietary allowance suggested by the Indian Council of Medical Research to conclude at the poverty line…show more content…
In its report submitted in the year 1993, it stated that the poverty line should not be an all India affair, rather it should be more state specific and its accounting should be based on the CPI of Industrial Workers in urban areas and CPI of Agricultural Workers in the rural areas. It used the Fishers Price Index on all India poverty line baskets to generate the state specific urban and rural poverty lines. It made an assumption that the provision of healthcare and educational facilities to be provided by the state as it has been constitutionally mandated. It made certain notable improvements, one of which was the adjustment of the poverty line for regional and spatial price variations. It even favoured the usage of the data collected by the NSS for poverty line estimation as those were the most detailed available then. Though there were certain drawbacks associated with its estimates, as it neither made any attempt to take note of the changing food preferences nor tried to evaluate the whether the updated poverty lines are good enough to buy the specified urban and rural
Open Document