Almost 15 years ago, the erstwhile Planning Commission set up a committee headed by C Rangarajan, a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), to review the methodology for measurement of poverty in the country. The committee, which submitted its report in June 2014, caused a stir when it estimated the national poverty line at Rs 1,407 in terms of monthly per capita expenditure for urban areas and Rs 972 for rural areas.

What this meant was that anyone spending more than Rs 47 per day in urban areas and Rs 32 per day in rural areas was not ‘poor’. These thresholds led to the number of poor in India being pegged at 29.5 per cent of the population. Since then, no new poverty line, at least one backed by the government, has been created.

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