Poverty Estimates in India: Old and New Methods, 2004-05

This is a working paper dealing with poverty estimates for India using the Old and New (Tendulkar Committee's) methods and is co-authored with Dr. Srijit Mishra. The Planning Commission has accepted the recommendations of the Tendulkar Committee, though it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. The present paper critically discusses these issues. It also presents poverty incidences, depth and severity estimates at various levels of disaggregation like state-region, social group and occupation group for 2004-05 using the 61st round of NSS data. Someone working on 2004-05 poverty estimates for India (61st round of NSS data) may get references from this paper. I started this paper with two quotes: one is from the Discorsi Politici authored by Francesco Giucciardini, one of the leading writers of the Italian Renaissance. He said, "The poor are a part of necessary furniture of the earth, a sort of perpetual gymnasium where the rich can practice virtue when they are so inclined". The other one is from W. B. Yeats, a great poet. "But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams beneath your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams..." These quotes were kept purposefully and while reading the paper, one should get it. It can be downloaded from:

http://www.igidr.ac.in/pdf/publication/WP-2011-015.pdf
An alternative link for download is:
http://works.bepress.com/durgesh_chandra_pathak/19/

happy reading...