NITI Aayog plays safe on poverty

Not to estimate poverty lines or absolute numbers; will take these from ongoing socio-eco caste census done by states, focus on impact of programmes

Taking note of some hard lessons learnt by its predecessor, the National Institution for Transforming India Aayog would not estimate either poverty lines or the number of the poor in the country.

The erstwhile Planning Commission, replaced by the Aayog, had got into a big controversy on these issues, with its calculations on the basis of the National Consumption Expenditure Surveys.

A task force under Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya on poverty alleviation is to not define or compute poverty as an aggregate measure but will look at social indicators to assess the impact of social schemes on the poor.

“We won’t determine or decide what is the poverty line as was done by the Rangarajan panel or others before that.

“The task force would not like to fall into the Rs 33-27 debate, as earlier,” a key source said.

He noted states were already undertaking a Socio Economic Caste Census.

“What we need to know is whether the programmes launched by the new government are having tangible impact, in terms of tangible outcomes.

"For this, we need to look at indicators,” the source said.

The number of poor as calculated by the socio-caste census would give a rough idea of the poverty line in each state.

It has been decided to include households without shelter, destitutes/living on alms, manual scavengers, primitive tribal groups and legally released bonded labourers in the Below Poverty Line list.

These households will have the highest priority for inclusion in the list.