Poverty up, poverty down

In April, India's Planning Commission accepted recommendations put forth by the so-called Tendulkar Committee on a new poverty headcount for the country. Constituted by the Planning Commission under economist Suresh D Tendulkar, the committee, after four years and a new methodology, arrived at a new figure for the number of Indians living below the poverty line: 37.2 percent, ten points higher than the previous official figure. With the government's subsequent official acceptance of the recommendations, these numbers now translate to roughly 407 million people, compared to the earlier number of 297 million, living on around USD 1.15 per day.

The Tendulkar numbers are the latest addition to the longstanding debate in India over how 'poverty' should be defined. This includes the practical difficulties involved in assigning a number to it, but also the linking of that number to critical policy issues, such as government welfare schemes – and, of course, the implications of globalisation, neoliberalism and India's economic reforms post-1991. While over the past two decades India has seen growth rates of gross domestic product (GDP) that were high by historical standards, their impact on overall deprivation remain highly contested. Officially, poverty numbers showed a decline from 36 percent of the population in 1993-94 to around 27 percent in 2004-05. But those numbers have been fiercely contested, with economists from all corners wading into the statistical rat's nest to try to prove that the figures suggested either too much or too little reduction in poverty.