Reforms trickling, poverty dips

NEW DELHI: Poverty has come down over the decade of reforms, but a fifth to a quarter of the population still remains poor, according to the latest estimates of poverty released by the government here on Wednesday.

Further, the rural-urban gap in poverty has narrowed — the respective shares of the poor in the total population for urban and rural India are closer to each other than ever before. According to one estimation procedure, the proportion of population below the poverty line has fallen to 21.8% in 2004-05, down from 26.1% in 1999-2000.

According to another estimation procedure, the poverty ratio for 2004-05 stood at 27.5%. As per the same procedure, 36% of Indians were poor in 1993-94, 38.7% in 1987-88 and 44.8% in 1983-84.

Surprisingly, the least poor state is Jammu and Kashmir (where 5.4% of the population is poor). The dubious distinction of being the poorest state goes to Orissa, where 46.4% people are poor. Other states with poverty ratio less than 15% are Kerala (15%), Delhi (14.7%), Goa (13.8%), Haryana (14%), Punjab (8.4%), Himachal Pradesh (10%) and Mizoram (12.6%).

States where one-third or more of the population is poor are Madhya Pradesh (38.3%), Uttarkhand (39.6%) Jharkhand (40.3%), Chhatisgarh (40.9%) and Bihar (41.4%). UP has clocked a poverty ratio of 32.8%.

Poverty is estimated from consumption data obtained by the National Sample Survey Organisation through its surveys. The latest comprehensive survey of consumption expenditure was carried out over 2004-05 (the 61st round of NSS). The comparable previous survey was for 1993-94. In between, a thin survey for 1999-2000 also yielded indicative estimates of poverty. Thedifferent estimation procedures depend on the period of recall of consumed items in the survey.

There is a marginal difference in the poverty levels of urban and rural India with poverty ratio of 28.3% in the rural areas and 25.7% in the urban areas in 2004-05. The difference in poverty levels of urban and rural areas has actually shrunk from 1993-94 levels. The poverty ratio in the rural and urban areas in 1993-94 was 37.3% and 32.4%, respectively.

While the average divide in poverty levels of rural and urban India is not much, in some states the divide is rather stark. For instance, in rural areas of Jharkhand, 46.3% of the people live below the poverty line in comparison to 20.2% in the urban areas.

In some states like Madhya Pradesh, the urban areas are poorer than the rural areas. In rural Madhya Pradesh, the poverty ratio is 36.9% compared to 42.1% in urban parts of the state.