On Measuring Poverty T CA Anant 1 Measuring Poverty in India has long and venerable tradition. In the pre-independence period, Dadabhai Naoroji sought to measure poverty with a view to describe the consequences ocolon ial rule in India. !is boo" Poverty and Un-British Rule in India drew attention to the enormo us dra in on wea lth caused by coloni al pol icy, and was the ou nda tion to man y int ell ectu al arg ument s or ind epe nde nce. #ubseq uen tly dur ing the ree dom str ugg le the $ongress Party, and subsequently the Planning $ommission and many eminent scholars have wor"ed on this issue. #rinivasan%&''() & has a detailed review othis bac"ground. In act it would not be an understatement that this discourse has been one oIndia*s major contribution to the ield odevelopment #tudies. It is not a mere scholarly e+ercisethe orld an" has stated that ighting Poverty is at the core oits wor", the /nited Nations when it outlined the millennium development goals stated as the irst goal isto Eradicate Extreme Poverty & Hunger. Poverty is at the h eart oalmost all discourses on development policy . In this conte+t when we see" to measure poverty there are at least three distinct types oobjectives%i) to build awareness on poverty and to "eep it in the agenda odiscourse0 %ii) to design policies, programs and institutions to alleviate poverty0 %iii) to monitor and evaluate these policies, programs and institutions that are associated with it. 1ach othese objectives imp oses very dier ent requir eme nts on dat a and the met hod ology omea surement. In particular it could easily be argued that the latter two are not single objectives but are in turn composites omultiple objectives in turns so we could in principle we could have many objectives. It would be beyond the scope othis paper to do justice on the data requirements oall these dierent objectives or measuring poverty. 1ssentially we wish to ocus on a comparasion between the irst and some elements othe second. In so ar as the irst is concer ned, the objecti ve is easily understoo d and is in act the basis oDadabhai Naoroji boo" published in 23'2 4 , the purpose was to inluence ritish public opinion about the consequences ocolonial rule on India. It was principally to bring poverty in the political discourse and inluence policy with that in mind. 5n objective repeated by the National Planning $ommittee othe $ongress and the authors othe ombay Plan %#ee #rinivasan %&''() beore independence and by the Planning $ommission in more recent times. hat is common in all these approaches is to state a normative criteria owhat constitutes socially acceptable minimum 6 necessary or the bare wants oa human being, to "eep him in ordinary good health and decency7 %Naoroji 23'2). !aving done so, the aim is to 1 $hie#tatistician oIndia. 8he views e+pressed in this article are personal. & #rinivasan, 8. N. %&''(), 9Poverty :ines in India;elections ater the Patna $onerence ,* Economic and Political We ekly, <&%<')<2==-<2>=. 3 y coincidence this is the same year #eebohm ;owntree published Poverty: A Study of T on !ife, which has been termed by some as the irst scientiic study othe issue % o rld ban" %&''3)). Da dabhai, it is true, unli"e ;owntree, did not conduct a survey but marshalled a range ooicial statistics and orders to ma"e his calculations0 his aim was to ma"e a political point.
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