Too poor to acknowledge poverty?

Who is a poor in our country? This may sound like a very rhetorical question, which everyone in the country has an answer to, but never the less needs to be brought into light again and again, because so is the condition of this new age that we have the retention level of a five year old.

Poverty, according to the World Bank; Poverty is pronounced as deprivation in well being, and comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. In simpler terms it means the inability of a person to access to the basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter.

And according to the World Bank, a person must earn approximately $2 per day, if he is to call himself above poverty line, and according to this, an approximate 60% of India’s population is below poverty line.

However if Indian economic ‘scholars’ are to be believed $2 per day is a very steep amount, and on the contrary all you need to survive in this high growing rate economy and with an ever so fluctuating inflation index, is Rs 28.62 per day and that too if you are living in urban areas of the country, but in case you live in rural part of the country (where mind you, most of the population of India lives) you only need Rs 22.42 per day, well that is, at least what the Planning Commission of India thought was needed to survive.

But what people fail to realize is that these small numbers matter big when it comes to defining policies, a decline of even Rs 2 in the minimum amount needed to survive means migration of millions of people from the BPL families to those that are above it.

And over the years all that the various governments, in order to promote themselves and to show the tremendous amount of work that they have done to uplift the poverty stricken people, have done is play with the numbers. That is the reason why the poor and poverty in our country does not depend on the money, an individual earns, rather it depends which government is in power.

This is the situation of poor in this country, he may not be able provide his family with food, but because he earns a little over than Rs 30 per day, he does not fall under the category of BPL families. 

And if the Planning Commission coming out with these reports was not enough, there are other prominent Political leaders who try to justify these reports.

But if mocking the poor is the main aim of the Planning commission, why do they stop here? Why not make these people who are above the poverty line pay taxes, hey if they can lead a sustainable life in Rs 28.62, they very well contribute in the development of the country.

Well certainly for a country in which only 2.77% of the people pay taxes, it is rather criminal to believe that only about 29% of the population is below poverty line.

If the only work of these reports is to try and hide the actual number of poor in the country, then why come out with a number at all, why not go out and say that the country is free of poverty and that no one dies of hunger and malnutrition.

For at least then the reports could be called totally biased and not be in the limbo that they today stand in.

The governments must understand that the numbers can be played with, but the ground reality remains that even after 65 years of independence poor still remain poor, but depending on the government.

The Planning Commission would be soon coming out with its new report in a few months and it would be rather interesting to see, how many poor people would the Commission find fit to be called poor.