Poverty alleviation has been a pre-eminent goal of India’s development efforts since its independence. In pursuing this objective, the planning process in the country has been a fertile ground for devising interventions, often successful though occasionally overlapping and ill-conceived too. Public measures directed at poverty alleviation have focused on creating adequate livelihood opportunities for the marginalised segments of the population, provisioning of public services and goods that have a direct bearing on an individual’s living standard and quality of life, strengthening of institutions and delivery mechanisms that empower the poor, and targeted development of backward regions through resource transfers and supportive policy measures.

Over the last six decades, there has been a significant decline in the incidence of poverty at the national level in India, and yet there are a number of concerns that take away the shine from this achievement. To begin with, the magnitude of poverty continues to be unacceptably high on any count. India has the largest number of poor among all countries and it is home to one-fourth of the world’s poor. Secondly, there are many pockets in the country where poverty is endemic and persistent. There is ample evidence to show that inequalities in income, per capita consumption and socially valued human development outcomes have increased between rural and urban areas and across some regions /states. Thirdly, despite a significant improvement in the growth rates of the economy, particularly in the more recent years, it has not necessarily translated into a sharper reduction in poverty. Growth though visible has not been adequately inclusive, and perhaps not even sufficiently widespread. Fourthly, although there has been a considerable step-up in public allocations to poverty alleviation programmes, the results are far from commensurate. It has been argued that besides serious implementation bottlenecks and accountability issues, enhanced public allocations to social sectors and rural development programmes at the expense of public investment in agriculture may have held back the full impact of these programmes on poverty alleviation. Finally, there are changes in the composition and distribution of the poor across regions and sectors of the economy that are perhaps not being recognised and adequately reflected in the policy measures.

It is necessary that these concerns should not be brushed aside in the wake of the current growth momentum of the Indian economy, for it may compromise the very sustainability of the growth process and the political stability of the country in the medium to long run. The conceptualisation of poverty, its measurement, the identification of the poor and measures to eradicate poverty, are all inter-related issues that require a concerted and comprehensive analysis in the light of the changes in the domestic economy and the international development environment, at this juncture of India’s development process.

II. OBJECTIVES OF THE SEMINAR

The overall objective of the seminar is to bring together a panel of eminent experts, from within and outside India, to revisit the poverty issue in all its facets, with a view to identify measures that may be necessary to speed up and sustain the process of poverty alleviation in India.

More specifically, the seminar seeks to review and deliberate on the following:

• The need for having a more accurate assessment of the incidence of poverty and a more effective and inclusive set of interventions for its eradication;
• The prevalent methodologies for measuring the incidence of poverty and the identification of poor at the local level in the country and assess the underlying assumptions for their appropriateness in the current context.
• Bringing together recommendations that can help in improving the policy framework and rationalise public interventions to better address the emerging concerns on poverty in the country.

III. BROAD THEMES

The main thematic sessions of the seminar will be as follows:

1. Conceptualising Poverty: From Income Poverty to Human Poverty

The debate on the conceptualisation of poverty and the suitability of an analytical framework, or criteria to measure its incidence in the country, on the one hand, and the design of public interventions to effectively address the issue on the other, has been a rich and on-going one. Poverty is a state of deprivation. In absolute terms, it reflects the ability of an individual to satisfy certain basic minimum needs for sustained, healthy and a reasonably productive living. Besides the economic dimension, this inability could have a social, cultural, political or even a physiological dimension. Until early 1970’s the conceptualisation of poverty, particularly in the planning and policy context, was focused on its income dimension, anchored in normatively defined food adequacy norms. It gradually gave way to the notion of basic minimum needs as a framework to address the poverty issue, which, in turn, evolved into the notion of human poverty as epitomised in UNDP’s human development approach in the 1990’s. This broadening in the notion of poverty has had implications both for the measurement issues as well as for policy prescription. While the policy framework for poverty alleviation has responded to this evolved notion of poverty, the same is not true for the measurement of poverty incidence in the country. This has led many to argue that in the narrow conceptualisation of poverty, implicit in the poverty line approach adopted by the government, the incidence of poverty was a gross underestimation, which was impeding the allocation of resources and the deployment of public efforts required to alleviate the problem in the country. The session will deliberate on competing views on this issue. More specifically it will focus on the following:

• Is there a need to conceptualise poverty broadly in keeping with the prevalent notion of human well-being in development theory?
• Is there a case for universal norms, such as human rights as reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to anchor the broader notion of well-being and hence poverty?
• Can the conceptualisation of poverty in the measurement criteria continue to differ from the notion adopted in designing policies and programmes for poverty alleviation?

2. Issues in Poverty Measurement: Assumptions and Implications

There is no unique approach to estimate a poverty line for measuring the incidence of poverty in conformity with the absolute notion of poverty. In the Indian context, a consensus emerged in the early 1970’s on the adoption of an energy adequacy norm to anchor the minimum consumption level, for defining the poverty line. It enabled a focus on ‘food poverty’- undoubtedly the most ugly of all deprivations for any individual. In subsequent work at the Planning Commission, Government of India, the poverty line approach and measurement methodology was refined and a series of consistent estimates were made available at regular intervals of time. There are, however, a number of issues that have been raised from time to time on the methodology adopted for estimating the incidence of poverty in the country. These could be clubbed into issues related to (i) the continued validity of the estimated calorie norms for benchmarking the reference consumption basket to define the poverty line; (ii) the relevance of the 1973 –74 reference consumption basket in view of significant changes in consumption patterns across all population groups for estimating the poverty line; (iii) the issue of relying solely on National Sample Survey data on household consumption expenditure for estimating poverty in the face of dramatic differences with the National Accounts Statistics estimates of private consumption expenditure; and (iv) the issue of appropriate price indices for updating the poverty lines over time. At the same time, it has been argued that, perhaps the time has come to move from a predominantly income focused criteria to one that can generally be described as a social indicators approach to measurement of human well-being and human poverty. In discussing these issues the session will focus, in particular, on the following:

• Is the social indicator approach, anchored in a broader notion of well-being and hence poverty, relevant and feasible for measuring the incidence of poverty in the country?
• How valid are the assumptions underlying the Planning Commission methodology to estimate poverty in the current Indian context?
• Given that poverty estimates serve as important development indicators for inter-temporal and inter-regional /state comparisons in India, as well as critical parameters in the allocation of public resources among competing regions of the country, what changes in the estimation methodology will help in making the poverty estimates more reliable and representative of the ground realities in the present context?

3. Identification of the Poor – Options, Experience and the Way Forward

Identification of the poor is a critical starting point in the implementation of poverty alleviation programmes in the country. Ideally the estimated poverty line could be used in a census of the income/ household consumption expenditure of the targeted population to separate the poor from the non-poor. This is, however, an expensive and a time consuming exercise, made more difficult by the informal nature of reporting on incomes or consumption expenditure, particularly in rural India. Recourse has therefore been taken to surveys/census using proxy indicators, whereby each household is scored on a set of easily observable indicators to determine the eligibility for receipts of government benefits under the poverty alleviation programmes. Accurate identification of the poor through such means is becoming increasingly important because once identified as below poverty line households, these households acquire entitlements over flow of public transfers and access to other resources under poverty alleviation programmes. Based on this methodology, various State Governments have prepared lists of below poverty line (BPL) households that cumulate into an estimate of poverty incidence which is much higher than the estimates based on NSS consumption surveys. This has led some to argue that the current estimates of poverty based on the NSS surveys are an underestimation of the prevailing ground realities. At the same time, there are others who argue that the BPL list is often inflated at the state level with a view to corner a greater share of resources from the Central Government.

This is an important issue, which has to be addressed with a view to have a better understanding of the subject. More specifically this session will focus on:

• How reliable are the proxy indicators for use in the identification of the poor in the BPL census carried out by the State Governments?
• How can the methodology to identify the poor at local level be contextualised without compromising on the need to maintain consistency and comparability in the estimates across region and over time?
• What are the lessons to be learnt from use of identification methodology of the BPL Census at state level in India and use of similar methodologies in other countries, with a view to bring down the identification errors?

4. Poverty Alleviation Programmes (PAPs) in India: Lessons Learnt and Restructuring the Design of Public Policy Interventions

India has experimented with a plethora of programmes with the objective of directly attacking poverty in the country. The interventions vary extensively – from the setting up of the universal public distribution system, to employment programmes (both self and wage), to improving access to basic needs (education, health, sanitation, etc.), and measures relating to creation of social security for targeted segments of the population –– with varying impacts across regions and population groups. In recent years many of these programmes have been restructured and strengthened, the best example of which is National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) programme. However, it is widely felt that these programmes have not been very effective in making a visible dent on poverty, particularly on the persistent and extreme poverty in large parts of the country. At the same time, it is also recognised that these measures are important when the growth outcomes are not percolating down adequately or at a sufficient pace to the poor and the vulnerable segments of the population. Widespread concerns have been expressed over the leakages and wastage of public resources in these programmes.

The main issues for discussion in the session will be the following:

· What are the lessons learnt from the implementation of various PAPs in the country? Why have some states performed better in this regard? Can the successes achieved in some parts of the country be replicated in others?

· How can these programmes be made effective instruments of poverty eradication? Is there a case for rationalising the various PAPs, particularly in the light of the initial results from the National Rural Employment Guarantee programme? Can such an ambitious programme play its envisaged role in alleviating rural poverty and bringing significant socio-economic change?

· What are the critical institutional changes required at various levels for achieving this goal?

5. Poverty in Bihar: Dimensions and Strategies for Eradication

Bihar with over 8 per cent of India’s population is the poorest state in India, next only to Orissa. The state hosts 15 per cent of the total rural poor of the country. Not only is the incidence of income poverty high, an overwhelmingly high percentage of people are deprived of access to basic amenities of life such as health, education, housing, sanitation, etc. These absolute deprivations are compounded further by widespread social and economic inequality. The discussions in this session will centre around the following issues.

· What is the extent and nature of poverty and other deprivations in Bihar and what are its characteristics, determinants and linkages in the state?

· How can the state come out of the vicious cycle of poverty, given the low resources and weak institutional and delivery mechanisms? What are the elements that are necessary to create a big push and who are the key players in this regard?

· How can programmes like the Public Distribution System and National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme be made effective in the eradication of poverty in the state? How can they be linked with the growth process and development of social and economic infrastructure?

· How can the state’s various institutions involved with poverty eradication and human development be strengthened so as to make a serious dent on poverty?

Although the discussions on the above issues will be on Bihar, they will be very relevant for other states as well, particularly for those belonging to the eastern region of the country.

IV STRUCTURE AND PARTICIPANTS

The seminar will be of the duration of two and half days (about 20 hours). While the inaugural and concluding sessions will be of one and half hour duration each, the rest of the time will be devoted to the five thematic sessions mentioned above. The tentative distribution of time for various sessions will be as follows: Inaugural: 1 ½ hour; Conceptualising Poverty – 2 hours; Issues in Poverty Measurement – 3-4 hours; Identification of the Poor – 3-4 hours; Lessons from the PAPs and Way Forward – 3-4 hours; Poverty in Bihar – 3 hours; Concluding Session – 1 ½ hour.

For each of the substantive sessions, papers will be invited or commissioned on a few identified issues. There will be, altogether, around 20 papers.

The seminar is being organised by the Institute for Human Development (IHD), A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies (ANSISS), and Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI) with support from the Bihar State Planning Board. It will be held during 20-22 July, 2007 at Patna in the premises of the A. N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies.

About 100 persons will be participating in the seminar, including about 25 local participants. While most of the participants will be economists and social scientists well known for their work on poverty and well being, many of them will be social activists, policy makers and programme implementers and development practitioners involved with various aspects of poverty alleviation. About 15 experts from outside India, both from academia and international development organisations, will also be participating.

V. OUTCOME

It is widely felt that poverty line in India needs to be periodically revised, which was also reiterated by the Expert Group on Estimation of Poverty, constituted by the Planning Commission. The outcome of this seminar is expected to be very useful for a better understanding of poverty and development of suitable indicators for its measurement and identification. This is critical in designing not only appropriate policies but also for just and judicious measures of resource transfer from the Centre to the states. The conclusions and recommendations are also expected to be of much use in refining and implementing the programmes of poverty eradication by the government – central, state and local – as well as non-government organisations. Besides, it will also contribute, theoretically and empirically, to a better understanding of poverty and is likely to be used extensively by the academic community interested in the issue.

The main conclusions and recommendations of the seminar will be brought out soon for wider dissemination among various stakeholders. Later on, a volume containing the revised papers will be published in a book form.