Friday, June 24, 2005

Poverty in India


Update (actually, not really!) to this post on poverty in India. Today's ToI had an editorial that started with:

The debate on the extent of poverty in India has become too serious to be left to economists alone. There is a 40% divergence between the poverty estimates of the National Accounts Statistics (NAS) and those of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO).

And, guess what? The data that this editorial is talking about were from 1999-2000! Haven't some new data (even those based on surveys and studies that are perhaps not as extensive as the massive NSSO ones) been collected? Is there anything at all that can tell us about the incidence/prevalence of poverty now?

Why don't we have timely data on such an important question/problem? Can someone who is in the know of things (like how these things are done, how often, etc) enlighten the rest of us?

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