60% population always below average consumption level

The average per capita expenditure of Indians cited in the preface to the consumption expenditure report of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) has added some new numbers to the poverty debate, prompting economists to warn against straightaway inferring poverty from the dreary figures.

While the report itself was released last year, its preface by NSSO director-general J Dash is now reeling out new numbers which are keeping the poverty debate boiling.

A PTI report on Thursday cited this preface to say that “about 60 per cent of India’s rural population lives on less than Rs 35 a day and nearly as many in cities live on Rs 66 a day”.

Dash has, in a preface to the report of the 66th round of the national sample survey for July 2009-2010, said, “In terms of average per capita daily expenditure, it comes out to be about Rs 35 in rural and Rs 66 in urban India. About 60 per cent of the population live with these expenditures or less in rural and urban areas.”

Economists and statisticians are quick to add that 60 per cent of Indians having a particular average expenditure does not imply poverty for that entire segment. In fact, they point out that around 60 per cent of Indians are always below the average consumption level -- and it indicates nothing.

Planning Commission member Pronob Sen says it is wrong to equate average consumption with the poverty line. “The average consumption data is used for modelling,” he notes. “It is to generate the consumer side of macro models. It is not to be equated with the poverty line.”