India raises official poverty line to 66 cents a day

Sep 21, 2011, 8:21 GMT

New Delhi - Indian authorities have agreed to raise the official poverty level after a court direction to take inflation into account, news reports said Wednesday.

The Planning Commission told the Supreme Court Tuesday that anyone earning less than 32 rupees (about 0.66 dollars) a day in urban areas and 26 rupees in rural areas would be eligible for welfare.

The court had ordered the government to revise the current level of official poverty up from 26 rupees in urban zones and 15 rupees in rural areas.

But rights activists said the increase was still inadequate to compensate for near-double-digit inflation, and that the government was trying to minimise the numbers it has to subsidize.

'It is obvious that this ... is a threshold aimed only at artificially reducing the number of persons below the poverty line so as to reduce the government's expenditure on the poor,' rights activist Aruna Roy was quoted as saying.

According to the commission, an expenditure of 5.5 rupees on cereals, 1.02 rupees on pulses and 2.33 on milk and 1.95 rupees on vegetables was adequate to keep a person healthy.

Current inflation is estimated at 9.78 per cent per year, with rice selling at 22 rupees per kilogram and milk at 27 rupees a litre.

According to official data, 37 per cent of India's 1.2 billion population live on less than 1 dollar a day. Unofficial estimates put this at over 70 per cent.