As pointed out by Tendulkar Committee, the concept of poverty is associated with socially perceived deprivation with respect to basic human needs like ________.
(a) the need to be adequately nourished

Question

As pointed out by Tendulkar Committee, the concept of poverty is associated with socially perceived deprivation with respect to basic human needs like ________.
(a) the need to be adequately nourished
(b) the need to be reasonably sheltered
(c) the need to be decently clothed
(d) the need to escape avoidable diseases
(e) the need to be minimally educated
Which of the above point/s is/are correct ?

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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.  (b) 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.  (c) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2026 Q46 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q46 — Economy PYQ with Answer