Progress on poverty tracking: India needs fresh official estimates

The number of people living in extreme poverty, under the $3 a day line, is now only 5.3 per cent of the population, compared to 27.1 per cent in 2011-12

There is little doubt that the prevalence of absolute poverty in India has fallen considerably over the last two decades. However, the exact measurement of poverty has been somewhat hampered by the absence of official poverty estimates. These had become problematic and controversial in the past because of some disagreement over what constituted an accurate and fair poverty line. In the absence of an internal consensus in the Indian establishment over this question, many have used the poverty line set out by the World Bank for countries in India’s income class. The World Bank’s line was introduced in 1990 as