Poverty in India:

Poverty in India:
In India, the identification process of persons below the poverty line has been put to a controversy for the last few years. Planning Commission adopted the survey of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) as a basis for defining poverty line and determining the number of persons below it.
On the basis of these criteria, Planning Commission estimated 18.96% of total population below the poverty line for the year 1993-94. Later, the expert group under the chairmanship of Prof. D.T. Lakadawala found earlier estimates of poverty unreliable and suggested an alternative approach for identifying poor in which different poverty-line was determined for different states on the basis of price level of that particular state. to rely on the
The expert group suggested that it will be most suitable disaggregated commodity indices for Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL) to update the rural poverty line and a simple average of suitably weighted commodity indices of consumer price index for industrial workers (CPIIW) for updating urban poverty line.
The poverty in India is measured by a poverty line that is probably one of the most disputed and incessantly attacked measure in the world. The World Bank’s controversial poverty line has its origins in the Indian model. It is simply what can be called a “starvation line”, a line that accounts for the feeling of satiety: measured in calories.
Poverty in India – Statistics
Over 40% of these same villages don’t have proper roads connecting them.
35% of households don’t have a nearby water source;
50% of Indians don’t have proper shelter;
85% of villages don’t have a secondary school;
70% don’t have access to decent toilets;
Despite the country’s meteoric GDP growth rate (about 9%), poverty in India is still pervasive; especially in rural areas where 70% of India’s 1.2 billion population live. It is one of the fastest growing economies in the world and yet its riches are hardly redistributed across the population.
It spends only 1% of its GDP on health, which is half that of China. While we are comparing public expenditure, contrast this with Russia and Brazil, whose spending on health is around 3.5% of their respective GDPs.