Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Poverty line differs across time and countries.
Reason (R) : The basic needs of people var

Question

Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Poverty line differs across time and countries.
Reason (R) : The basic needs of people vary across regions and overtime.
Select the correct answer from the code given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A). A poverty line is not a natural constant: it is the money value of a minimum bundle of goods and services that a society treats as indispensable. Assertion is true — India's own official line has been redrawn again and again (Alagh Task Force 1979, Lakdawala 1993, Tendulkar 2009, Rangarajan 2014), and lines differ sharply between countries because India works with an absolute consumption-basket line while the European Union works with a relative one (Eurostat's at-risk-of-poverty threshold is '60 % of the national median equivalised disposable income after social transfers'). Reason is also true — what counts as a 'basic need' genuinely varies by region and moves over time: calorie norms differ for rural and urban work, fuel and clothing needs differ with climate, and items such as sanitation, schooling and electricity have entered the basket that earlier lines ignored. And Reason is precisely the mechanism behind Assertion: because the basket of basic needs (and the prices of that basket) differ across space and shift across time, the money line drawn around it must differ too. So R explains A, which is exactly what option (d) states.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This is the trap option — it concedes both statements but denies the causal link. The link is real and direct: the poverty line is defined as the cost of a minimum-needs basket, so a change in what those needs are (or in what they cost) mechanically changes the line. R is not a separate coincidental truth; it is the reason A is true.  (b) R is not false. Basic-need norms are explicitly region- and time-specific in Indian practice — the 1979 Alagh Task Force itself used different calorie norms for rural (2,400 kcal/day) and urban (2,100 kcal/day) India, and later committees widened the basket beyond food to include education, health, clothing and transport.  (c) A is demonstrably true. Within India, official state poverty lines differ in the same year because price levels differ across States — UPSC asked exactly this in 2019. Across countries, an absolute line in a low-income economy and a relative 60 %-of-median-income line in the EU are not remotely the same number or even the same kind of measure.

Concept: A poverty line is a threshold of income or consumption expenditure below which a person is counted as poor. It is constructed, not observed: an authority first fixes a basket of 'minimum necessary' goods and services, then prices that basket. Two design choices follow. An ABSOLUTE line fixes the basket first and lets the money value follow prices — this is India's approach, historically anchored on calorie norms. A RELATIVE line fixes the money value as a fraction of the society's own income distribution — the EU's at-risk-of-poverty threshold is 60 % of national median equivalised disposable income. Either way the line moves with prices, with the composition of 'basic needs', and with the society doing the measuring.

State PCS 2025 Q11 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q11 — Economy PYQ with Answer