Indian government’s think tank, Niti Aayog, today decided to redefine poverty line of the country in order to track the success of it’s poverty alleviation measures after a year-long deliberation of the task force on poverty failed to arrive at any other acceptable measure.
According to a report, the government has yet not decided the constitution of the committee, but as soon as it is formed, its only responsibility will be to identify the number of poor in the country.
In the words of a senior govt. official, “We will soon set up an expert committee to narrowly look at the poverty line issue only, as most states are politically not in sync with each other”.
The earlier task force which was set up in 2015 under the chairmanship of Niti Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagariya, couldn’t define poverty line clearly due to a lot of flak created by the UPA govt. at that time. One of the suggestions made by the task force was to use the number to assess the success of poverty related social sector programs including defining the lower 40 per cent of the country’s population as poor.