1. Prologue
2. Poverty line
   1. Tendu Leopard vs Ranga Khush
   2. Urban Poverty line
   3. Rural Poverty line
   4. Why Ranga NAA-KHUSH (unhappy)?
   5. How is 100 million poors increased?
   6. Calorie Expenditure
   7. Engel’s law & MPCE
3. Centrally sponsored schemes (CSS)
4. CSS classification
5. Poverty removal schemes
   1. Scheme#1: MNREGA Act 2005
      1. MNREGA performance
      2. MNREGA Reforms already taken
      3. MNREGA: Economic Survey observations
   2. Scheme #2: NRLM / Aajeevika
   3. Scheme #3: National Urban Livelihood mission

Prologue

links will be updated once I finish last (first) part on UNDP HDI-2014 report.

Poverty line

Q. Who decides Poverty line?

Planning commission

Q. How does it decide poverty line?

• Monthly per capita Expenditure.
• Suresh Tendulkar designed its Formula.

Q. Who provides the data of monthly Expenditure?

• NSSO- National sample survey organization
• under Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation

According to Tendulkar formula, poverty has declined, as seen in following graph:

Time for stupid census ranking:

Tendu Leopard vs Ranga Khush

Earlier Committees: Alagh ’77, Lakdawala ’89

Urban Poverty line

*this is their official recommendation. Rest numbers are “derived”.

Rural Poverty line

*these are the official numbers recommended by them. Remaining figures are derived.

Why Ranga NAA-KHUSH (unhappy)?

Q. Why is Ranga unhappy with journalists and politicians? Inform “the nation” in 200 words.

• C. Rangarajan has received lot of negative publicity because:
  • He kept poverty line to be ridiculously low – Rs.32 for rural and Rs.47 for Urban.
  • Therefore He is insensitive towards the poor.
• But Ranga never gave those daily numbers. He had given combined poverty line for a family of five members- Rs.7035 (Urban), which is a plausible number. After all, if you live in a family of five, then some costs will get reduced per head (e.g. rent, lightbill, LPG etc.)
• Besides, if a family spending >7000 per month = their income would be definitely above 7000. So in reality, Ranga has not “insulted” the poor. Infact, He has tried to cover more poor under BPL & Sarkaari schemes.
• Media has derived those “insensitive” daily Expenditure figures (Rs.33, Rs.47) by dividing the monthly Expenditure of five people, then further dividing that number by 30.
• If you objectively convert Ranga’s poverty line into purchasing power parity (PPP), it’s $2.44 per person, per day. And that figure even higher than World bank estimate. In other words, Ranga included more poor in BPL, than even World bank would!
• Thus, journalists and politicians have misinterpreted the poverty line issue- just like they misinterpreted Anti-CSAT movement to be against those 8 easy English MCQs above Decision Making section!

How is 100 million poors increased?

Since Ranga raised poverty line, obviously more people would become “below poverty line”.