The revision of poverty estimates will have a wide and deep impact on our understanding of agriculture and its place in the rural livelihoods circle. The Report of the Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Estimation of Poverty (Planning Commission, November 2009) is now out and it has already shaken up the 'official' figures.

The estimated urban share of the poor population (described as headcount ratio or poverty ratio) in 2004-05, namely, 25.7 per cent at the all-India level, is generally accepted as being less controversial than its rural counterpart at 28.3 per cent that has been heavily criticised as being too low. There has been growing concern about the official estimates of poverty released by the Planning Commission. In view of this, Planning Commission set up an expert group under the chairmanship of Professor Suresh Tendulkar to examine the issue and suggest a new poverty line and estimates. The expert group has considered this issue in detail and has suggested new methodology to arrive at state wise and all-India rural and urban poverty lines for 2004-05, the latest available major National Sample Survey (NSS) round on household consumer expenditure which provides the data base for the calculation of poverty estimates by the Planning Commission.

We're told that the expert group "has also taken a conscious decision to move away from anchoring the poverty lines to a calorie intake norm in view of the fact that calorie consumption calculated by converting the consumed quantities in the last 30 days as collected by NSS has not been found to be well correlated with the nutritional outcomes observed from other specialised surveys either over time or across space (i.e. between states or rural and urban areas)".

What does this mean? While moving away from the calorie norms, the proposed poverty lines have been validated by checking the adequacy of actual private expenditure per capita near the poverty lines on food, education and health by comparing them with normative expenditures consistent with nutritional, educational and health outcomes. The proposed price indices are based on the household-level unit values (approximated price data) obtained from the 61st round (July 2004 to June 2005) of NSS on household consumer expenditure survey for food, fuel and light, clothing and footwear at the most detailed level of disaggregation and hence much closer to the actual prices paid by the consumers in rural and urban areas.

The report contains a table on the poverty lines and poverty head count ratio in states. Here it is:

Poverty lines and poverty head count ratio
	Poverty Line (Rs)		Poverty Head Count Ratio
State	Rural	Urban	Rural	Urban
All India	446.68	578.80	41.80	25.70
Andhra Pradesh	433.43	563.16	32.30	23.40
Arunachal Pradesh	547.14	618.45	33.60	23.50
Assam	478.00	600.03	36.40	21.80
Bihar	433.43	526.18	55.70	43.70
Chhatisgarh	398.92	513.70	55.10	28.40
Delhi	541.39	642.47	15.60	12.90
Goa	608.76	671.15	28.10	22.20
Gujarat	501.58	659.18	39.10	20.10
Haryana	529.42	626.41	24.80	22.40
Himachal Pradesh	520.40	605.74	25.00	4.60
Jammu & Kashmir	522.30	602.89	14.10	10.40
Jharkhand	404.79	531.35	51.60	23.80
Karnataka	417.84	588.06	37.50	25.90
Kerala	537.31	584.70	20.20	18.40
Madhya Pradesh	408.41	532.26	53.60	35.10
Maharashtra	484.89	631.85	47.90	25.60
Manipur	578.11	641.13	39.30	34.50
Meghalaya	503.32	745.73	14.00	24.70
Mizoram	639.27	699.75	23.00	7.90
Nagaland	687.30	782.93	10.00	4.30
Orissa	407.78	497.31	60.80	37.60
Pondicherry	385.45	506.17	22.90	9.90
Punjab	543.51	642.51	22.10	18.70
Rajasthan	478.00	568.15	35.80	29.70
Sikkim	531.50	741.68	31.80	25.90
Tamilnadu	441.69	559.77	37.50	19.70
Tripura	450.49	555.79	44.50	22.50
Uttar Pradesh	435.14	532.12	42.70	34.10
Uttaranchal	486.24	602.39	35.10	26.20
West Bengal	445.38	572.51	38.20	24.40