How poor is poor?

Quantum mechanics has the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. When a particle is tiny enough to fit into the quantum world, you can be sure about either its position or its momentum, not both. The very act of measuring either changes the other.

India's world of planned development also now has an uncertainty principle, when it comes to consumption levels tiny enough to fit into the world of the poor: you can either measure poverty or you can measure middle class perceptions of poverty, but you can't get a handle on both.

Very expert estimates by one of the country's noted empirical economists guides the Planning Commission to the figure of 45,625 as the annual income of a family of five living in a village that would enable it to go above a defined poverty line.

This translates into 25 per head per day. Since it does not even cover one-fourth the cost of a decent sundae, many honourable members of the middle class are outraged at this figure, at deployment of such low cunning by the government to artificially lower the level of poverty in the country.

Why, this government is no better than your maid who tries to gouge you for an extra 500, claiming that people in the next block pay their help 4,000 a month. With the government setting such an example, is it any wonder vegetable sellers, three-wheeler drivers and carpenters all overcharge?

Understating poverty to pinch pennies! The stingy government now wants to raise the price of cooking gas, in the name of cutting subsidies. As if subsidy were a dirty word in this poor country. Let them just try to take away our cooking gas subsidy! If they have money to squander on rural job schemes, why should the government act so tough on those teeny few lakhs one might overlook while filing tax returns? Bankrupt politicians!