MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 46 of 100

Correct — option (4), "All of the above". The stem is quoting the Tendulkar Expert Group's own account of what poverty means. The Group did not treat poverty as a purely nutritional condition; it described it as socially perceived deprivation in respect of a set of basic human needs, and the needs it listed are the ones printed here — to be adequately nourished, to be reasonably sheltered, to be decently clothed, to escape avoidable disease, and to be minimally educated. All five statements are therefore correct, and the only choice that takes all five is option (4). Notice how the option set forces that conclusion, because this is a structural point worth carrying into the hall. Five items are printed, (a) to (e), but options (1), (2) and (3) each select exactly three of them: (1) takes (a), (b) and (c); (2) takes (b), (c) and (d); (3) takes (c), (d) and (e). Any of those three choices is a claim that at least two of the five statements are false. Now look for a pair that no triple contains. Statement (a), adequate nourishment, appears only in option (1). Statement (e), minimal education, appears only in option (3). No printed triple holds both. So the moment you are satisfied that adequate nourishment and minimal education both belong on the Tendulkar Committee's list — and nourishment is the least deniable item on any account of poverty — every three-item option is dead and option (4) is forced. You do not need to adjudicate the middle three at all. That also explains why this particular escape option is live here while it is dead elsewhere in the paper. "All of the above" is offered eleven times in this booklet, and the rule for it never changes: it is right only when every named item can be shown to belong, and wrong the instant one of them fails. On this question no item fails, because the list in the stem is a quotation rather than an examiner's construction. One honest footnote for the reader who goes to the report. The Expert Group's own enumeration of basic needs runs slightly longer than the five printed here — it also names the need to be mobile, for purposes of social interaction and participation in economic activity. The question has taken five of the needs and asked whether they are on the list. They are. Nothing in the stem claims the list is exhaustive, so the omission does not make any printed statement false.

• (1)(a), (b) and (c) — Option (1) keeps nourishment, shelter and clothing and drops the escape from avoidable disease and minimal education. That is the food-clothing-shelter reflex — the traditional trio of basic needs — and it is precisely the narrow view the Tendulkar Expert Group moved away from. Health and education are not decorative additions to its list; the Group built private expenditure on health and education into the consumption basket that defines its poverty line, which it could not have done had it excluded those needs from its concept of deprivation.
• (2)(b), (c) and (d) — Option (2) drops both ends of the list — adequate nourishment at (a) and minimal education at (e) — while keeping the middle three. Dropping nourishment is the fatal move: no account of poverty in the Indian literature, from the calorie-anchored lines of the Alagh and Lakdawala eras to the Tendulkar Group's own broader formulation, has ever excluded being adequately nourished from the basic needs it measures. This option is what a candidate marks when he picks a middle-looking combination without testing any single item.
• (3)(c), (d) and (e) — Option (3) is the mirror image of option (1): it keeps clothing, health and education and drops nourishment and shelter. It appeals to a candidate who has correctly registered that the Tendulkar Group widened the concept beyond food, and who then over-corrects into thinking the Group replaced the nutritional core rather than adding to it. The Group broadened the basket; it did not delete food and housing from the definition of deprivation.

Behind this question lies a shift in how poverty is conceived. The older Indian tradition treated poverty as an income or consumption shortfall measured against a nutritional norm — a person was poor if his consumption expenditure fell below the money value of a basket delivering a fixed number of calories a day. The Tendulkar Expert Group worked instead from the idea of socially perceived deprivation: poverty is failure to reach a standard of living that the society in question regards as the minimum acceptable, and that standard covers several distinct needs, not one. The needs it enumerated — adequate nourishment, reasonable shelter, decent clothing, escape from avoidable disease, a minimum of education, and the mobility required to take part in social and economic life — read as a practical rendering of the capability approach associated with Amartya Sen, in which what matters is not the commodities a person holds but what he is able to be and to do. The word 'socially perceived' also does real work: it signals that the minimum is not a timeless biological constant but a norm that rises as a society becomes richer, which is why poverty lines have to be revisited by successive committees rather than merely price-updated forever.

The conceptual widening had a direct methodological consequence, and MPSC likes to test the link between the two. Because the Group counted escape from avoidable disease and minimal education among basic needs, it built household private expenditure on health and education into the reference consumption basket used to fix the poverty line — something the earlier calorie-anchored lines had not done. That is one of the reasons the Tendulkar lines came out higher than the Lakdawala lines, and why the measured headcount for 2004-05 rose from 27.5 per cent to 37.2 per cent without any change in actual consumption. The Rangarajan Expert Group of 2014 then moved partly back the other way, returning to normative requirements — calories, protein and fat together — while retaining an allowance for essential non-food expenditure on education, clothing, house rent and conveyance. The three formulations are best held side by side: a calorie norm, a socially perceived deprivation basket, and a hybrid of normative nutrition with essential non-food spending.

• The Tendulkar Expert Group described poverty as socially perceived deprivation in respect of basic human needs — being adequately nourished, reasonably sheltered, decently clothed, able to escape avoidable disease and minimally educated, together with the mobility needed for social interaction and economic participation.
• This wider concept fed directly into method: the Group included household private expenditure on health and education in the reference consumption basket, which earlier calorie-anchored poverty lines had excluded.
• The Expert Group was constituted by the Planning Commission in December 2005 under Prof. Suresh D. Tendulkar and submitted its report in 2009; its estimates for 2004-05 were 41.8 per cent rural, 25.7 per cent urban and 37.2 per cent all-India.
• The formulation is close in spirit to the capability approach of Amartya Sen, in which deprivation is judged by what a person is able to be and to do rather than by the bundle of goods he possesses.
• The Rangarajan Expert Group (2014) shifted back toward normative nutrition — calorie, protein and fat requirements together — while retaining an allowance for essential non-food expenditure on education, clothing, house rent and conveyance.

• Reducing the Tendulkar concept to food, clothing and shelter. Health and education are on the Group's list, and their presence is what justified including private health and education spending in the poverty basket.
• Reading 'All of the above' as a lazy option. It is neither safe nor suspect by nature; it is right exactly when every named item belongs, and here the items are a quotation from the report itself.
• Assuming that because the stem prints five needs, the report listed only five. It named mobility for social and economic participation as well, and nothing in the stem claims the list is complete.
• Confusing 'socially perceived deprivation' with relative poverty measured as a fraction of median income. The phrase means the minimum acceptable standard is socially determined, not that the line is set at a fixed percentage of the median.

The Commission asks the Tendulkar Committee in two registers. The numerical register wants the ratios and the poverty lines — 41.8 and 25.7 per cent for 2004-05, 25.7 and 13.7 per cent for 2011-12, and the rupee lines that go with them. The conceptual register, which this question belongs to, wants the definition: what the Group meant by socially perceived deprivation, which needs it enumerated, what it dropped from the earlier method and what it added. Questions in the conceptual register are usually built as statement lists with an escape option, because the underlying material is a quotable sentence rather than a table. The practical preparation is to read the report's opening formulation once in the original words, since an examiner quoting a source verbatim tends to produce a question in which every printed item is correct.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which expenditure heads did the Tendulkar Expert Group explicitly incorporate into the reference consumption basket that the earlier calorie-anchored poverty lines had not ?

  • (a)Transport and communication
  • (b)Health and education
  • (c)House rent and electricity
  • (d)Fuel and light

  Answer(b) Health and education. Because the Group counted escape from avoidable disease and a minimum of education among the basic needs whose denial constitutes poverty, it built household private spending on health and education into the basket used to fix the line. That inclusion is one of the reasons the Tendulkar lines came out higher than the Lakdawala lines and the measured headcount for 2004-05 rose from 27.5 to 37.2 per cent.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Tendulkar Committee's description of poverty as 'socially perceived deprivation' with respect to basic human needs is closest in spirit to which approach in development economics ?

  • (a)The Lewis dual-economy model
  • (b)The capability approach associated with Amartya Sen
  • (c)The Harrod-Domar growth model
  • (d)The Kuznets inverted-U hypothesis

  Answer(b) The capability approach associated with Amartya Sen, which judges deprivation by what a person is able to be and to do rather than by the goods he holds or the income he earns. The Lewis model concerns surplus labour moving from agriculture to industry, Harrod-Domar concerns the savings-investment determinants of growth, and the Kuznets hypothesis concerns the path of inequality as an economy develops — none of them is a theory of what poverty is.