1979Poverty line
Alagh Task Force
Y. K. Alagh
Calories: 2,400 kcal a day in rural areas, 2,100 in urban
Line₹49.09 rural, ₹56.64 urban per person per month (1973–74 prices)
2,400 / 2,100 calories; ₹49.09 / ₹56.64.
Indian economy · Complete guide
India's poverty committees
How many Indians are poor depends first on where you draw the line. Six committees have drawn it, or decided who falls under it, since 1979. Learn what each one anchored the line to and the numbers it produced, and the chronology and match-the-list questions answer themselves.
Start here
What a poverty line is, and the two questions
India's official poverty line is absolute and consumption-based: a level of monthly spending per person below which someone is counted poor. Each committee answers the same question differently: what should that spending buy? Enough food for a calorie norm? A basket that includes health and education? Protein and fat as well as calories?
Question 1
How many are poor?
Draw a line, apply it to NSS consumption surveys, count the share below it. Alagh, Lakdawala, Tendulkar, Rangarajan.
Question 2
Which households are poor?
Pick out actual families for BPL cards and schemes, using exclusion, inclusion and scoring. Saxena (rural), Hashim (urban).
Why the line keeps moving
A line is a basket priced at a date. Change what goes in the basket, or how you update its price, and the count of the poor changes even when nobody's spending has.
History
Before the committees: Naoroji to Dandekar–Rath
- 1901Dadabhai Naoroji, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. Priced a subsistence minimum from the diet given to jail inmates: the “jail cost of living” method.
- 1962Planning Commission Working Group. A national minimum of ₹20 per person per month at 1960–61 prices.
- 1971V. M. Dandekar and N. Rath, Poverty in India: the first systematic assessment, on NSS 1960–61 data. One calorie norm, 2,250 a day, for both rural and urban areas and one line for all states: ₹15 rural, ₹22.50 urban per person per month at 1960–61 prices.
Overview
The six committees at a glance
Draws the poverty line (counts the poor) Identifies BPL households
1993Poverty line
Lakdawala Expert Group
D. T. Lakdawala
Kept Alagh's calorie-based line; did not redefine it
LineAlagh's ₹49 / ₹57 (1973–74), made state-specific
State-specific lines; CPI-AL and CPI-IW.
2009Poverty line
Tendulkar Expert Group
Suresh D. Tendulkar
A wider basket that properly counts health and education spending
Line₹446.68 rural, ₹578.80 urban (2004–05); ₹816 / ₹1,000 (2011–12)
Poor37.2% in 2004–05 (vs 27.5% by the old method); 21.9% in 2011–12
MRP and implicit prices; 37.2% for 2004–05; 21.9% for 2011–12.
2009BPL identification
Saxena Committee
N. C. Saxena
Identifying which rural households are BPL, not counting them
Rural BPL identification; at least 50% entitled.
2012BPL identification
Hashim Committee
S. R. Hashim
Identifying which urban households are BPL
Urban BPL identification.
2014Poverty line
Rangarajan Expert Group
C. Rangarajan
Calories, protein and fat, plus a normative non-food basket
Line₹972 rural, ₹1,407 urban per person per month (2011–12)
Poor29.5% in 2011–12: 30.9% rural, 26.4% urban; 363 million people
₹972 / ₹1,407; 29.5% for 2011–12.
1979
Alagh (1979): the calorie line
Official name
Task Force on Projections of Minimum Needs and Effective Consumption Demand
Chair
Y. K. Alagh
Set up by
Planning Commission
1979
Report
1979
Rural₹49.09
Urban₹56.64
Per person per month, 1973–74 prices. Rural needs more calories (heavier work) yet costs less (cheaper food).
- Read off the spending level at which people in the 1973–74 NSS (28th round) actually got those calories, food and non-food together.
- One national rural line and one national urban line.
- Scaled the NSS consumption distribution up to National Accounts totals; updated the line with the CSO private consumption deflator.
- The first official poverty counts used this method.
1993
Lakdawala (1993): state-specific lines
Official name
Expert Group on Estimation of Proportion and Number of Poor
Chair
D. T. Lakdawala
Set up by
Planning Commission
September 1989
Report
July 1993
Lakdawala did not draw a new line. It kept Alagh's basket and asked a better question about prices: the same basket costs different amounts in Bihar and in Kerala, and its cost rises at different speeds.
- State-specific poverty lines: the national basket priced in each state's 1973–74 prices.
- Updated with consumer price indices: agricultural labourers (rural); industrial workers and non-manual employees (urban).
- Dropped the adjustment of NSS consumption to National Accounts totals.
- Found urban poverty higher than rural for the first time, for 1987–88.
| Year | Rural line (₹) | Urban line (₹) | Poor (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1973–74 | 49.09 | 56.96 | 54.9 |
| 1983 | 89.45 | 117.64 | 44.5 |
| 1993–94 | 211.30 | 274.88 | 36.0 |
| 1999–2000 | 327.56 | 454.11 | 26.1 |
Planning Commission series as given in Datt & Sundharam; per person per month.
2009
Tendulkar (2009): a wider basket
Official name
Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Estimation of Poverty
Chair
Suresh D. Tendulkar
Set up by
Planning Commission
December 2005
Report
November 2009
What was wrong with the old line
- An old basket. Still the 1973–74 consumption pattern, three decades on.
- Bad price updates. CPI-AL understated rural price rise, so rural poverty was understated; some states showed more urban than rural poverty.
- Health and education left out. Private spending on them had grown but was not properly counted.
- Mixed Reference Period (MRP) consumption, and prices implicit in the NSS consumer surveys, both for the first time.
- Took the 2004–05 urban line as the reference and derived rural and state lines from it.
- Accepted by the Planning Commission; the official method until the Rangarajan report.
2004–05, old method
27.5%
2004–05, Tendulkar
37.2%
Same survey, same year: a bigger basket counts about ten points more people as poor. Rural poverty jumped most, from 28.3% to 41.8%; urban barely moved (25.7%). Lines: ₹446.68 rural and ₹578.80 urban per month.
2014
Rangarajan (2014): back to nutrition, and more
Official name
Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Measurement of Poverty
Chair
C. Rangarajan
Set up by
Government of India (Planning Commission)
June 2012
Report
June 2014
Set up in 2012 amid criticism that the official lines were too low (the Supreme Court had asked how anyone could buy 2,400 calories on them), the Rangarajan group built a line from three parts: a food basket that meets calorie, protein and fat norms; a normative allowance for education, clothing, rent and conveyance; and everything else poor households actually buy.
Rural₹972
Urban₹1,407
Food (meets nutrient norms)Education, clothing, rent, conveyance (median household)Other non-food (as the poor spend)
- Nutrient norms: 2,155 kcal rural and 2,090 urban, with 48 / 50 g protein and 28 / 26 g fat.
- Food: the spending of the group that meets those norms. Essential non-food (education, clothing, rent, conveyance): what the median household spends.
- For a family of five: ₹4,860 a month rural, ₹7,035 urban.
- Update the line with a Fisher index.
Higher level, same trend
Rangarajan counts 38.2% poor in 2009–10 and 29.5% in 2011–12; Tendulkar 29.8% and 21.9%. The line is higher, so the level is higher, but both show a fall of about eight points in two years.
Identification
Saxena and Hashim: who is BPL?
A headcount says how many; a ration card needs a name. These two committees designed the census method for picking households, and used the same three-step logic.
1Automatic exclusion
Households with clear signs of being well off are left out.
2Automatic inclusion
Households with clear signs of destitution are put in.
3Score the rest
A weighted score of deprivations ranks everyone else.
2009BPL identification
Saxena Committee
N. C. Saxena
Identifying which rural households are BPL, not counting them
Rural BPL identification; at least 50% entitled.
2012BPL identification
Hashim Committee
S. R. Hashim
Identifying which urban households are BPL
Urban BPL identification.
Interactive
Same year, different numbers
Each method gives its own series. Compare within a series, never across: the brackets mark years where two lines count the same survey very differently. Tap a point for the number and what it measures.
- 2004–05, same survey: the old line counts 27.5% poor, Tendulkar's wider basket 37.2%. That is 9.7 points more people counted as poor.
- 2011–12, same survey: Tendulkar counts 21.9% poor, Rangarajan's higher line 29.5%. That is 7.6 points more.
21.9%Tendulkar, 2011–12. Official from 2009. Re-estimated back to 1993–94.
| Alagh | Lakdawala | Tendulkar | Rangarajan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Report | 1979 | 1993 | 2009 | 2014 |
| Anchor | Calories 2,400 / 2,100 | Alagh's line | Basket incl. health, education | Calories, protein, fat + normative non-food |
| Lines | One national rural, one urban | State-specific | State-specific, from urban reference | State-specific |
| Price update | CSO deflator | CPI-AL, CPI-IW | Implicit NSS prices | Fisher index |
| Consumption recall | Uniform (URP) | URP | Mixed (MRP) | Modified mixed (MMRP) |
| Headline number | — | 36.0% (1993–94) | 21.9% (2011–12) | 29.5% (2011–12) |
Counting is only half the job
Everything above is about where to draw the line. How to summarise the poor once it is drawn (the headcount ratio, the poverty gap, the squared poverty gap and the MPI) has its own page: Measuring poverty: H, PG, P₂ and the MPI.
Exam traps
Exam traps
Watch out for
The mistakes examiners are fishing for
- Lakdawala kept Alagh's line. Its contribution was state-specific lines and CPI updating, not a new basket.
- Tendulkar was the first to use MRP and implicit NSS prices, and widened the basket to health and education. Rangarajan added protein and fat norms to calories.
- Two numbers for 2011–12. 21.9% is Tendulkar (the official figure); 29.5% is Rangarajan. For 2009–10: 29.8% vs 38.2%.
- Saxena and Hashim did not count the poor. They designed how to identify BPL households, rural and urban.
- Rural calorie norm is higher, rural line is lower. 2,400 vs 2,100 calories, but ₹49.09 vs ₹56.64.
Practice
Check yourself
A. Numbers
Problem 1
Under the Rangarajan line, what does a rural family of five need to spend a month, and how much of one person's ₹972 is food?
B. Facts and concepts
1The calorie norms of 2,400 (rural) and 2,100 (urban) come from the:
2Which committee first used the Mixed Reference Period and prices implicit in NSS surveys?
3The Lakdawala Expert Group's main change was:
4The Rangarajan Expert Group estimated the poverty ratio for 2011–12 at:
5The Saxena Committee (2009) was concerned with:
6Arrange by date: A. Tendulkar B. Alagh C. Rangarajan D. Lakdawala
Sources
- Datt & Sundharam's Indian Economy (S. Chand, 2020): 'Poverty and the Planning Process in India'
- C. Rangarajan and S. Mahendra Dev, 'Counting the Poor: Measurement and Other Issues', IGIDR WP-2014-048
- Report of the Expert Group (N. C. Saxena) on the methodology for the BPL Census 2009
- PIB: Identification of poor (Hashim Expert Group)
- PRS: Poverty estimation in India
- NITI Aayog: National Multidimensional Poverty Index, A Progress Review 2023
Daily figures (about ₹27 and ₹33 for Tendulkar 2011–12) are the monthly lines divided by 30.
Try it on real questions
Nine past-paper questions on poverty committees
From IIT JAM, UGC NET, GATE, CUET-PG, JNU and the University of Hyderabad: which committee did what, who first measured poverty, and the headcount numbers.
These are questions from the TestStop bank. A free account answers 10 a day, each with its worked solution; All-Access opens every set with no daily limit.
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