A full meeting of the Planning Commission presided over by Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda approved the changes in the calculation of poverty as suggested by the Lakdawala Committee.
This means that the number of people below the poverty line will at least double. The number of people below the poverty line was 16 per cent of the population in 1993-94 or 145.6 million under the current method. Under the Lakdawala calculation, it will be 36.3 per cent or 330 million.
More importantly, the number of people identified as poor and eligible for the modified PDS is expected to double from the current level of 142 million.
At the 45-minute meeting which began at 7 p.m., Gowda told commission members that he had already made a commitment to parliament about implementing the public distribution system based on the Lakdawala calculation of poverty and there could be no going back at this stage.
Madhu Dandavate, deputy chairman of the plan panel, explained that the Commission had made a few changes to the original recommendations of the Lakdawala committee.
State governments will now carry out a fresh exercise to identify people below the poverty line, based on 1995-96 prices. But the state machinery is not geared for proper identification despite the guidelines set by the Commission.
The current level of poverty under the Lakdawala method remains to be worked out. The population has grown by 1.7 per cent a year while the economy has grown at about 7 per cent of GDP. If population has increased the number of people below poverty line, economic growth has decreased it, a Planning Commission source said.
Hoever, it is very difficult to determine how much of overall economic growth has trickled down to the poorest of the poor. As long as this is not determined, it is not possible to know the actual number of people below the poverty line, he added. As far as the integrated rural development programme (IRDP) is concerned, the switch to the Lakdawala formula is merely an academic excersise. As of now, no more than a fourth of the people below the poverty line is covered by the IRDP scheme which is the countrys largest anti-poverty programme.
