Mathur Ritika Passi

on minimum nutritional requirements per
person despite the regular constitution
of expert committees to review the
national poverty threshold. 6 However,
the currently operational methodology,
based on the recommendations made by
what is popularly known as the Tendulkar
Committee, has made a distinct shift
away from the calorie-based estimates. It
defines poverty as per capita consumption
expenditure for a basket of basic essential
goods, which includes private expenditure
on health and education. 7
Although the Tendulkar line takes into
account the multidimensionality of poverty
to a certain extent, there are several
criticisms regarding its low baseline of INR
33/day for urban areas and INR 27/day for
rural areas. Specifically, economists such as
Madhura Swaminathan have highlighted
the underestimation of expenditure on nonfood
items (health, education, clothing and
housing). 8
The shortfall of India’s national poverty line
is perhaps best underscored by the large
divergence between the globally accepted
Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and
the Tendulkar line. MPI, a first of its kind,
is designed to capture multiple deprivations
in health, education and living standards.
As opposed to the poverty incidence
calculated with the Tendulkar line—
21.92% in 2011-12—calculations made
through MPI show that in 2013, 55.3% of
the Indian population still suffered from
acute multidimensional poverty. 9 The MPI
estimate of 55.3% is more than double the
national estimate of 21.92%.
This jarring disparity means that there
is an urgent need to bring the national
methodology in consonance with the global
norm. Developing a globally competent
poverty line does not merely relate to target
1.2, but it would also address the issue of
providing access to basic facilities (target
1.4). In India, the poverty line is also used
to identify poor households for targeted
delivery of pro-poor programmes that
provide services that form part of nonincome
poverty factors. A low poverty line
would therefore lead to the exclusion of
a larger group of people living in extreme
poverty from publicly provided non-income
poverty alleviation initiatives.
Accommodating Non-Income
Factors
Comprehensive poverty alleviation
necessitates the provision of social safety
nets. Recognising this need, three of the five
targets under SDG 1 (targets 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5)
deal with the issue of protective capabilities
expansion—financial inclusion, social
protection and land ownership. This section
looks at how various centrally-sponsored
schemes have attempted to address these nonincome
factors.
Financial Services
In the face of leakages in public funds/services
induced by poor infrastructure or corruption,
financial inclusion assumes a particularly
important role in equipping people with
the tools needed to escape poverty. Access
to financial services allows the benefits of
social security programmes like the Mahatma
Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)—a national
initiative that guarantees the ‘right to work’—
to bypass sluggish bureaucratic mechanisms
and misappropriation by officials, and
instead reach beneficiaries directly. Thus,
target 1.4 promotes universal access to
financial services. The Indian government
has also launched the Pradhan Mantri Jan
Dhan Yojana(a nation-wide initiative to
promote financial inclusion) in August 2014
to increase access, especially in rural areas.
This will be explored in detail in Chapter 10
dealing with Goal 8.
Social Security Systems
Target 1.3 requires the institution of
nationally appropriate social protection
systems, especially for the poor and the
vulnerable. Perhaps India’s most eminent
social protection programme over the last
decade has been the MGNREGA, with the
mandate of providing a guaranteed term
of skilled manual labour to every rural
household on demand. 10 Despite issues
regarding delays in wage payments and the
need to strengthen the systems of recording
demand, the scheme has provided jobs
to over 250 million workers, with over
37% of them belonging to the Scheduled
Caste/Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) categories
(official designation given to historically
disadvantaged groups of people in the
country). 11
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