Barring of Tented Politicians: Civil Services Mentor Magazine - October 2013

BARRING OF TENTED POLITICIANS

• Poverty Estimates 2011-12 (Free Available)

• Odisha, Bihar showed biggest decline in Percentage of Poor (Only for Online Coaching Members and Premium Members)

• Some facts to be Known (Only for Online Coaching Members and Premium Members)

In figures officially released this week, the Planning Commission claims that poverty incidence had declined from 37.2 per cent of the population in 2004-05 to 21.9 per cent in 2011-12. This 15.3 percentage points decline over a seven-year period amounts to an unprecedented annual decline of 2.2 percentage points in the poverty rate. If that trend is sustained, it would lead to an end to “official” poverty in India in a decade. The previous year for which a comparable estimate based on the Tendulkar Committee’s methodology is available, using data from a similar survey, is 2009-10. In that year, the incidence of poverty was reported at 29.8 per cent, reflecting a 7.4 percentage points reduction relative to 2004-05. A further 8 percentage points reduction over the next two years, when GDP growth in fact slowed, has substantially hiked the annual reduction rate.

Poverty Ratio in India declined to 21.9 percent in 2011-12 from 37.2 percent measured in 2004-05 on the basis of the increase in per capita consumption. The Planning Commission of India on 23 July 2013 released its report on the Poverty Estimates for 2011-12. The report was based on the Large Sample Surveys on Household Consumer Expenditure conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

The National Poverty Line estimated for rural areas during 2011- 12 was 816 rupees per capita per month, whereas, for urban areas it was recorded at 1000 rupees per capita per month. Thus, for a family of five, the all India poverty line in terms of consumption expenditure would amount to about 4080 rupees per month in rural areas and 5000 rupees per month in urban areas. These poverty lines would vary from State to State because of inter-state price differentials.

Poverty Estimates 2011-12

1. The all India poverty ratio is obtained as state-population weighted average poverty ratio, and the all India poverty line is the per capita per month expenditure that corresponds to the all India poverty ratio.

2. The NSSO tabulates expenditure of about 1.20 lakh households. Since these households have different number of members, the NSSO for purpose of comparison divided the household expenditure by the number of
members to arrive at per capita consumption expenditure per month. This is called Monthly Per Capita Consumption Expenditure (MPCE) and is computed on the basis of three different concepts:

a) Uniform Reference Period (URP)
b) Mixed Reference Period (MRP)
c) Modified Mixed Reference Period (MMRP).
3. The national level poverty ratio based on comparable methodology (Tendulkar Method) for 1993-94, 2004-05 and 2011-12 estimated from Large Sample Survey of Household Consumer Expenditure data of 50th, 61st and 68th round respectively are given in the image.

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