-PTI
The daily expense cut-off of Rs 32 per person to define urban poverty “is not all that ridiculous in Indian conditions”, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said today.
The comments, certain to stoke the controversy over the criteria, came in a letter that Ahluwalia wrote to attorney-general Goolam Vahanvati.
“The fact is that Rs 4,824 per month for a family (of five persons) to define poverty is not comfortable but it is not all that ridiculous in Indian conditions,” Ahluwalia wrote.
Vahanvati has agreed to appear for the plan panel in the Supreme Court over a PIL filed by an NGO.
The corresponding poverty cut-off in rural areas has been fixed at Rs 26 a day. Members of the Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council have also criticised the figures.
But Ahluwalia suggested the cut-offs were being interpreted in the wrong way. “The poverty line is not a comfort line of acceptable living for the aam aadmi. It is the poverty line, which by definition implies considerable stress.”
On criticism that the figure was not adequate to take care of health and education, Ahluwalia said such facilities were to be provided free by the state. He also did not agree with claims by states that the panel was understating poverty, leaving out deserving individuals. “The fact is states give more BPL cards than the entitlement. Worse, they often do not give the cards to deserving people.”