Many scholars consider the study conducted by Dandekar and Rath in the 1960s as the first systematic assessment of poverty in independent India. Which option from the following is NOT correct about the study?
Tap an option to check your answer.
1 mark, −0.333Economics of Growth and DevelopmentPoverty, inequality and human developmentPoverty estimation in IndiaHardabout 2 min
GATE 2023 Question 39: Poverty, inequality and human development
Answer and worked solution
Answer: (C)
This question asks which statement is NOT correct, so three of the four describe the Dandekar-Rath study accurately, and one does not.
(A), (B), and (D) accurately describe genuine features of the study's methodology: it used 1960-61 NSS MPCE data, applied an identical calorie norm across rural/urban areas, and used a uniform poverty line across states.
(C) is the statement that is NOT correct. The study's actual finding was that the poverty head count ratio was not higher for rural areas relative to urban areas in the way the statement implies — the study's specific rural-urban comparison did not match this characterization (the finding may have shown comparable or even higher urban poverty incidence in certain readings of the original results, in contrast to the commonly assumed 'rural poverty is always higher' intuition).
Therefore the answer is (C).
The trap: (B) The study used the identical calorie norm for rural and urban areas.
This is a dense historical/methodological question. Students who default to the common real-world intuition that 'rural poverty is always higher than urban poverty' in India may assume (C) sounds correct and instead flag a genuinely true methodological detail like (B) as the error.
Poverty, inequality and human development has come up 92 times in 7 exams since 2010.
What this question tests
This question is on Poverty estimation in India, part of Poverty, inequality and human development in Economics of Growth and Development.
How India's poverty line has been set and re-estimated over time.
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Question from the GATE 2023 paper. Solutions are TestStop's own. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any examination authority.