Plan panel to eat its words on poor definition

A day after social activist Aruna Roy asked Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia to try living on Rs 32 a day, the Planning Commission has decided to revisit the Rs 32 definition of poverty, at a meeting to be chaired by Ahluwalia on October 3.

The relevance of the poverty line for the country is set to be redefined in the context of the ongoing Supreme Court case. The commission will take a view on removing caps on BPL (below poverty line) families. The caps are set by the Planning Commission to predetermine the number of poor in a state or district or block, based on the poverty line.

If the caps are removed, the relevance of the poverty line as a criterion for deciding the number of people who qualify as poor will become a thing of the past.

The commission has been pilloried by all sections of society since it said in an affidavit before the Supreme Court in the Right to Food case that Rs 32 per head a day was the poverty line for the country, based on 2009 prices.

“The Rs 32 poverty line to determine who is poor and who is not poor will go,” says commission member Mihir Shah. The poverty line would be used only to compare relative poverty among states and will not be the basis to calculate outlays for targeted poverty alleviation programmes and food security, he says.

Many members in the commission have suggested poverty be viewed as a multi-dimensional phenomenon that requires a multi-dimensional approach, rather than a blanket division of society into those above the poverty line and those below it.

Member Abhijit Sen, who supports this view, says the October 3 meeting will discuss the question of removing caps in the BPL survey. The survey, now under way in all states, decides who gets a BPL card. The survey throws up information to identify the poor. But, the Planning Commission imposes caps, which ultimately decide how many of these poor are included in the BPL category.

So, even if the data collected suggest more people should be in the BPL category, the caps skew and distort that, says Sen. He says the meeting is not about the poverty line but about the caps.

“The moment the caps are removed, the poverty line would become redundant as a means of deciding funds given to states for BPL schemes like food distribution. The poverty line would then be something like the GDP estimates,” he explains. As per the BPL census now under way, the poor would be decided on the basis of three processes: exclusion, inclusion and seven deprivations.

Shah says a multi-dimensional approach would mean if a deprivation identified in a person is disability, he would become eligible for disability pension. But he may not be eligible for housing, which will go to someone whose deprivation is a lack of proper housing.

Food security benefits may be given to people with two or three deprivations. So, the BPL category would be permanently delinked from the poverty line.