Which of the following Committees recommended a poverty line based on nutritional requirements exclusively ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, Alagh Committee. The 1979 Task Force chaired by Dr Y.K. Alagh gave India's first official poverty line, defined purely on nutritional (calorie) norms: 2,400 kcal per person per day in rural areas and 2,100 kcal in urban areas. The expenditure required to meet that calorie intake became the poverty line — a strictly nutrition-based benchmark.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) The Lakdawala Committee (1993) retained the calorie anchor but its main recommendation was to update the poverty line using price indices (CPI-AL/CPI-IW) and to construct state-specific poverty lines — a pricing/methodology reform, not a fresh nutrition-only definition.  (c) The Tendulkar Committee (2009) deliberately moved AWAY from a pure calorie norm to a broader consumption basket that also captured health and education spending, using Mixed Reference Period data.  (d) The Rangarajan Committee (2014) used calorie, protein and fat norms TOGETHER with a normative non-food component — a wider basket, not nutrition 'exclusively'.

Concept: India's poverty line has been redefined by successive expert groups. The earliest — the Alagh Task Force (1979) — pegged poverty solely to a minimum calorie intake. Later committees progressively broadened the basket (prices, state variation, then health/education), so 'exclusively nutritional' uniquely fits Alagh.

State PCS 2020 Q3 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2020 Q3 — Economy PYQ with Answer