Ground Report | New Delhi: Poverty in India; Union Minister Rao Inderjit Singh in a written statement to the Rajya Sabha has stated that 270 million Indians were living below the poverty line in India in 2011-12. The poverty line was defined based on the Monthly Per Capita Consumption Expenditure (MPCE) as a criterion.
The former Planning Commission estimated the poverty line and poverty rate on the basis of Large Sample Surveys of Household Consumer Expenditure conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) of the Ministry of Statistics and Implementation of programs. The latest data from the Large Sample Survey of Household Consumer Spending published by the NSSO correspond to round 68 conducted in 2011-12.
Based on these data, the former Planning Commission estimated the poverty lines and the poverty rate in 2011-12 following the methodology of the existing Tendulkar Committee and published through a press release issued on July 22, 2013. The number of people living below the poverty line in India has been estimated at Rs 27 crore in 2011-12.
The poverty line was defined based on the Monthly Per Capita Consumption Expenditure (MPCE) as a criterion. For the year 2011-12, the poverty line at the whole level of India was estimated as a per capita monthly consumption expenditure of Rs. 816 for rural areas and Rs. 1000 for urban areas. Details by state/UT of the population living below the poverty line in 2011-12, including Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, are provided in the Annex.