| |
|
|
The Poverty Debate in Perspective: Moving Forward with the Tendulkar Committee |
|
Yoginder K. Alagh |
|
This paper begins with the proposition that the Report of the Tendulkar Committee is a significant step forward in the literature and policy debate on poverty in India. Its author had chaired the Group which had defined the Official Poverty Line (OPL) and he has been arguing that the OPL developed in the 1970s, when hunger was more widely prevalent in India and the country was living hand to mouth is no longer relevant. Since the Lakdawala Committee set up for that purpose did not revise the OPL, this paper reviews the recent poverty literature to provide a backdrop for the discussion that is likely to follow. The paper shows that the critique that the OPL is not benchmarked in the demand theory is incorrect. The 1979 Task Force had worked in a framework of Linear Expenditure Systems and, in fact, the tradition of dual pricing systems with price elasticities worked out separately for the rich and the poor came out of its work. It regards the mapping of nutrition distributions on expenditure distributions as one of the significant contributions of the Tendulkar Committee and suggests that this work should continue. The definition of the new poverty line for India as the Urban Poverty Line in the OPL is liable to criticism since the ‘Alagh Poverty Line comes back as Banquo’s Ghost’. There is also double counting in the provision of education and health both as public expenditure and as private expenditure in the new poverty line. The paper argues that the concept of deprivation points in the BPL Census Report needs to be integrated with a development strategy rather than an entitlements scheme at public expense. |
|