The debate on the “poverty line” continues with the new proposal that the concept would be better justified if a multi-dimensional approach was adopted instead of relying principally on a “consumption-based limit”. As Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, put it recently, the new approach would take into account factors like purchasing power, quality of housing, drinking water and toilets.

Straightaway, the point needs to be made that such a multi-dimensional approach in defining poverty, and thus arriving at a “poverty line, is far more acceptable than one based on expenditure alone. And just as man cannot live by bread alone, he cannot live by just spending money on food items, or calorie-intake. It may be argued that the manifestation of poverty is the inability to spend money on basic necessities, and, therefore, a money indicator could serve best the purpose of defining a benchmark for poverty, which is the poverty-line.

REFERENCE POINT

Perhaps, this is the “reference point” which Mr Ahluwalia has been talking of, after the Planning Commission's affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court last year on the poverty-line ran into flak from economists and civil society. In its affidavit, the Commission had said that it considered Rs 32 expenditure per day, per capita, in urban areas, and Rs 25 in rural areas as the limit for below poverty-line people. The court had asked the Commission to review its policy to use such a low poverty-line to eliminate people from the beneficiary list for various programmes. Subsequent developments led to the formulation of the stand that “while the poverty figures would still be calculated to carry out comparative studies between regions and with time, it would not be used to impose an artificial cap on the number of beneficiaries of various social sector and development schemes”.

Now, the multi-dimensional approach has been suggested, which more or less makes sure that a generally acceptable poverty-line will take years to emerge. The reason for this is simple. The minimum calorie-intake levels to keep body and soul together for a human being took years to emerge and become generally accepted. Even now, there is a lot of debate on what the nutrition level should be to keep a human heart and mind functioning at an acceptable level. Now, under the multi-dimensional approach, agreement will have to be hammered out on a number of specific criteria, which could take years instead of months.

POVERTY LINE

Take, for example, drinking water. How much potable water is needed to keep the body of a human being functioning during the course of a day given a very small intake of calories? What is the smallest floor-space required for a family to be categorised as being below the poverty line? What is the minimum distance a family will have to trek daily every time it wants to use a toilet to be defined as living below the poverty-line? And purchasing power, as everyone knows, varies within the country from region to region, the inference being that a poverty-line based on a single figure denoting purchasing power applicable to the entire country won't be realistic, certainly as an indicator of poverty.

The ‘poverty-line business', therefore, promises to keep churning, among economists and politicians of all hues, while the Government of the day will no doubt continue to hasten at an excruciatingly slow pace to combat poverty, especially in the rural areas.

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