MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 58 of 100

Correct — option (2), 'Rs. 47 and Rs. 32'. The expert group chaired by C. Rangarajan, constituted by the Planning Commission and reporting in 2014, set the poverty line for 2011-12 at a monthly per capita consumption expenditure of Rs. 1,407 in urban areas and Rs. 972 in rural areas. Divide each by thirty and the daily figures the question asks for fall out: Rs. 1,407 a month is about Rs. 47 a day, and Rs. 972 a month is about Rs. 32 a day. That arithmetic is worth carrying into the examination hall, because it is a check that works even when the daily figures themselves have slipped from memory — the committee's line was defined monthly, so the daily numbers are derived and will not be round. Applying that line, the committee found 29.5 per cent of India's population to be poor in 2011-12, some 363 million people, which was a great deal higher than the 21.9 per cent produced by the Tendulkar Committee's line for the same year. The reason for the difference lies in how the line was built. The Rangarajan group did not simply update the earlier line for prices; it constructed a fresh one, anchored in normative requirements for food that took account of protein and fat as well as calories, and added independently estimated provisions for essential non-food items such as clothing, rent, conveyance and education, with a further allowance for other non-food spending. The result was a more generous line and therefore a larger measured poverty population. It should be remembered that the committee's recommendations were not officially adopted by the government, so the Tendulkar line has remained the one most often cited in official poverty comparisons — a point that makes the Rangarajan figures a favourite examination subject precisely because they are known without being official. Note that the stem is a two-blank fill-in-the-blank and asks for the urban figure first; the options follow the same order.

• (1)Rs. 50 and Rs. 35 — This is the nearest wrong pair and therefore the most dangerous, because it is close enough to the true figures that a candidate with a rough recollection will accept it. What gives it away is that both numbers are round. The Rangarajan line was defined as a monthly per capita consumption expenditure, Rs. 1,407 for urban and Rs. 972 for rural areas, and daily figures obtained by dividing those by thirty land on Rs. 47 and Rs. 32 rather than on multiples of five. A pair of round numbers in an option set of this kind is a strong signal that the figures were chosen to look plausible rather than derived from the committee's own thresholds, and the arithmetic check takes only a moment once the monthly figures are known.
• (3)Rs. 55 and Rs. 40 — This pair sets the line well above what the committee recommended, and a candidate who chooses it has probably reasoned from the general knowledge that the Rangarajan line was higher than the Tendulkar line and has then overshot. The Tendulkar Committee's line for the same year, 2011-12, worked out at about Rs. 33 a day in urban areas and Rs. 27 a day in rural areas, so the Rangarajan figures of Rs. 47 and Rs. 32 are indeed substantially higher; but the increase is not open-ended, and pushing the daily figures to Rs. 55 and Rs. 40 would imply monthly thresholds far above the Rs. 1,407 and Rs. 972 the committee actually set. Holding the two committees' figures side by side is the cleanest way to keep the scale right.
• (4)Rs. 60 and Rs. 45 — This is the furthest from the recommended figures and is likely to attract a candidate reasoning about present-day prices rather than about a line drawn for 2011-12. Poverty lines are always stated for a base year and at that year's prices, so a figure that feels too small for today may be exactly right for the year in question, and updating it mentally for inflation is precisely the error the option is designed to catch. The Rangarajan committee reported in 2014 on data for 2011-12, and its thresholds belong to that year. Any question that names both a committee and a reference year is asking for the line as fixed for that year, not for what the equivalent sum would be at the time the paper was written.

India's official poverty line has been redrawn several times and each revision is best remembered by what it changed. The line in use for decades derived from the calorie norms recommended by a task force in the 1970s — 2,400 calories a day per person in rural areas and 2,100 in urban areas — converted into the monthly expenditure required to buy them, and the Lakdawala Committee of 1993 kept that anchor while changing the way state-level lines were updated for prices. The Tendulkar Committee, reporting in 2009, broke with the calorie anchor and moved to a consumption basket that covered food, education, health, electricity and transport, using the urban line of the earlier method as its reference point and adopting a mixed recall period for consumption data; on its line, poverty in 2011-12 stood at 21.9 per cent. The Rangarajan group, reporting in 2014, went back to normative requirements but broadened them, taking account of protein and fat alongside calories and adding separately estimated allowances for essential non-food items, which yielded the higher line of Rs. 1,407 and Rs. 972 a month and a poverty ratio of 29.5 per cent. Since its recommendations were not adopted, India has had no officially updated income poverty line for later years, and the discussion has shifted towards multidimensional measurement.

Poverty estimation is a standing favourite of MPSC's economy section because it combines committee names, years, figures and methods, all of which are examinable separately. This particular item is a two-blank fill-in-the-blank with numerical options, which reduces it to pure recall — no reasoning within the question can recover the figure if it is not known. That makes the arithmetic relationship between the monthly and the daily line unusually valuable: a candidate who has learnt Rs. 1,407 and Rs. 972 can produce Rs. 47 and Rs. 32 in the hall, and a candidate who has learnt only the daily figures has nothing to fall back on if memory fails. The second habit worth carrying is to read the order in which the stem asks for the two figures. This stem asks for urban first and rural second, and every option follows that order with the larger figure first, but a candidate who has memorised the pair the other way round can transpose them under time pressure. The rural line is always the lower of the two, and that single fact resolves any doubt about which number goes where.

• The Rangarajan Committee, reporting in 2014, fixed the poverty line for 2011-12 at a monthly per capita consumption expenditure of Rs. 1,407 in urban areas and Rs. 972 in rural areas, which works out to about Rs. 47 and Rs. 32 a day respectively.
• On the Rangarajan line, 29.5 per cent of India's population, about 363 million people, were poor in 2011-12, against 21.9 per cent on the Tendulkar Committee's line for the same year.
• The Tendulkar Committee's poverty line for 2011-12 was about Rs. 33 a day in urban areas and about Rs. 27 a day in rural areas, and it abandoned the calorie anchor in favour of a broader consumption basket.
• The Rangarajan group built its line from normative requirements covering protein and fat as well as calories, and added separately estimated allowances for essential non-food items such as clothing, rent, conveyance and education.
• The government did not adopt the Rangarajan Committee's recommendations, so the Tendulkar line has remained the more frequently cited basis for official poverty comparisons.

• Transposing the rural and urban figures; the rural line is always the lower of the two, which settles any doubt about the order
• Choosing a pair of round numbers, when the daily figures are derived from monthly thresholds and therefore do not fall on multiples of five
• Mentally updating a base-year poverty line for present-day prices, when the question asks for the line as fixed for its reference year
• Confusing the Rangarajan figures with the Tendulkar figures, which are substantially lower and produced a much smaller poverty ratio for the same year

Poverty line questions in MPSC papers ask for the figures, for the committee that recommended them, for the year to which they apply, for the poverty ratio they produced, or for the methodological change a committee introduced. The Commission usually names both the committee and the reference year in the stem, which is a signal that a specific pair of numbers is wanted rather than a general sense of the magnitude. Because there are only three or four such committees, the whole territory can be held in a small table of committee, year of report, reference year, rural and urban lines and resulting poverty ratio, and that table will answer almost every version of the question, including the comparison items that ask which committee produced the higher estimate.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Applying its own poverty line, the Rangarajan Committee estimated the proportion of India's population living in poverty in 2011-12 at approximately what level ?

  • (a)21.9 per cent
  • (b)29.5 per cent
  • (c)37.2 per cent
  • (d)17.4 per cent

  Answer(b) 29.5 per cent — about 363 million people, on a line of Rs. 1,407 per capita per month in urban areas and Rs. 972 in rural areas. The figure of 21.9 per cent belongs to the Tendulkar Committee's line for the same year, and the gap between the two estimates arises entirely from the more generous basis on which the Rangarajan line was constructed, not from any difference in the underlying survey data.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following was the principal methodological change introduced by the Tendulkar Committee in defining India's poverty line ?

  • (a)It moved away from the calorie norm to a broader consumption basket covering food, education, health, electricity and transport
  • (b)It abandoned consumption expenditure in favour of income data
  • (c)It set a single national poverty line with no rural-urban distinction
  • (d)It measured poverty only in multidimensional terms

  Answer(a) It moved away from the calorie norm to a broader consumption basket covering food, education, health, electricity and transport — the earlier lines had been anchored in daily calorie requirements of 2,400 in rural and 2,100 in urban areas converted into money terms, and the Tendulkar Committee replaced that anchor while retaining consumption expenditure as the measure. The Rangarajan group later returned to a normative basis but widened it beyond calories to protein and fat, with separate allowances for essential non-food items.