Poverty line at Rs 47: How expensive is it really to live in urban India?

According to the recent Rangarajan panel report on poverty, those spending more than Rs 47 per day in a city are not poor. ET Magazine decided to conduct a simple experiment: track an underprivileged person’s expenses for one day in four cities.

Four parameters were considered: one, the person is a single migrant, like many in cities are; two, he lives in a slum tenement; at the lowest possible rent; and travels to work from the outskirts to a commercial area (20 km) using public transport. Caveat: this is a back of the envelope calculation. Here are the results: