Topic regarding poor people in India

This is a nice article pertaining to the poor people of India. I guess the best way to eliminate poverty would be to reduce the baseline for measuring poverty.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/india-sparks-controversy-with-stingy-definition-of-poverty-_-1275-a-month-for-city-dwellers/2011/05/27/AGTNdbCH_story.html

India’s stingy definition of poverty _ $12.75 a month for city dwellers _ called little help

NEW DELHI — Every day, through scorching summers and chilly winters, Himmat pedals his bicycle rickshaw through New Delhi’s crowded streets, earning barely enough to feed his family. But to India’s government he is not poor — not even close.

The 5,000 rupees ($110) he earns a month pays for a tiny room with a single light bulb and no running water for his family of four. After buying just enough food to keep his family from starving, there is nothing left for medicine, new clothes for his children or savings.

Still, Himmat is way above India’s poverty line.

Earlier this month, India’s Planning Commission, which helps sets economic policy, told the Supreme Court that the poverty line for the nation’s cities was 578 rupees ($12.75) per person a month — or 2,312 rupees ($51.38) for Himmat’s family of four. For rural India, it’s even lower at about 450 rupees ($9.93).

The revelation set off an angry debate in a country with soaring economic growth that has brought Ferrari dealerships and Louis Vuitton stores to cater to the new urban rich but left hundreds of millions of others struggling without access to adequate food and clean water.

The World Bank global poverty line, at $1.25 a day or about $38 per month, is three times higher than India’s urban level. Local activists say a better name for India’s standard would be “the starvation line.”

“This number is a joke. There’s no seriousness about the poor,” activist Aruna Roy said.

The Planning Commission said it has to set the poverty line — which determines who gets government assistance — to make the best use of limited funds.

“When you have such a large number of people, given the resources that are available to the government, do you target the poorest of the poor or do you spread your net wider and succeed in covering nobody?” Pranab Sen, an adviser to the Planning Commission, recently told the NDTV news channel.

A daily allowance of 19 rupees (42 cents) would buy 3 1/2 bananas from a stall outside the commission’s own office in the Indian capital or less than two pounds (one kilogram) of wheat flour or rice, staples for most Indians.

Himmat, who like many Indians uses just one name, said India’s poverty line was ridiculous.

“What can we eat with that much money? Not even two dry rotis,” he said, referring to the traditional flat bread of north India.

Rent for his room, which is no larger than 10 feet by 4 feet, costs 1,500 rupees ($33). He struggles to send his two children to a poorly run government school that costs him another 1,000 rupees ($22). The remaining 2,500 ($55) must pay for food, medicines and any other necessities for his family.

In the summer, he sends his wife and children back to their village in eastern India and sleeps on the sidewalk to save on rent.

“I am a very poor man. I can’t imagine living on any less money,” he said.

The poverty debate began after India’s top court asked the Planning Commission to explain earlier this month why hundreds of millions of Indians are undernourished when the country had vast stores of food grains — at times running into millions of tons of surplus.