In spite of adequate pension, I am poor as per govt’s new criteria

The real issue for the country is to ensure growth across gender, caste or religious lines. For markets cannot function otherwise.

niti aayog, purchasing power parity, purchasing power parity india, poor income in india, Gadgil-Mukherji Formula — If the Niti Aayog is to be taken seriously, its agenda has to include demographics, energy, land and water. (Source: File)

Many decades ago, the World Bank declared me “poor”. They said that they had done so on the basis of a “poverty line” I had developed. I had protested, then. Now my own country has done the same thing and I don’t know what to do. Help me, dear reader. But first my story.

The World Bank’s Poverty Line, originally at a $1 a day at purchasing power parity (PPP) prices was they said, consistent with the then official Indian poverty line in 1975. This was calculated in terms of the money required to sustain consumption levels that provide the required nutrition in terms of calories per person per day in rural and urban areas. But PPP prices, I pointed out, were derived from weights in internationally traded goods. These don’t have much to do with the consumption of the poor, I argued.