Joke Of The Day (New Bpl Norms: Rs 39 Enough For Medical Expenditure)

[kshah 452]

Source : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/new-bpl-norms-rs-39-enough-for-medical-expenditure/articleshow/10063533.cms

NEW DELHI: Updating the poverty line cutoff figures, the Planning Commission said that those spending in excess of Rs 32 a day in urban areas or Rs 26 a day in villages would no longer be eligible to draw benefits for those living below the poverty line.

TOI broke down the overall monthly figure for urban areas and used the CPI for industrial workers along with the Tendulkar committie report figures to see what these numbers translate into and how much the Planning Commission believes is enough to spend on essential items so as not to be deemed poor. The Planning Commission suggests that spending Rs 5.5 on cereals per day is good enough to keep people healthy.

Similarly a daily spend of Rs 1.02 on pulses, Rs 2.33 on milk and Rs 1.55 on edible oil should be enough to provide adequate nutrition and keep people above the poverty line without the need of subsidized rations from the government.

It further suggests just Rs 1.95 on vegetables a day would be adequate. A bit more and one might end up outside the social security net. People should be spending less than 44 paisa on fruits, 70 paisa on sugar, 78 paisa on salt and spices and another Rs 1.51 on other foods per day to qualify for the BPL list and qualify for subsidy under various government schemes.

A person using more than Rs 3.75 per day on fuel to run the kitchen is doing well as per these figures. Forget about the price hike of fuel or sky-rocketing rents in the city. If anyone living in the city is spending over Rs 49.10 a month on rent and conveyance, he or she could miss out on the BPL category.

As for healthcare, Rs 39.70 per month is felt to be sufficient to stay healthy, believes the Planning Commission . On education, the plan panel feels those spending 99 paisa a day or Rs 29.60 a month in cities are doing well enough not to need any help.

Similarly, one could be considered to not be poor if he or she spends more than Rs 61.30 a month on clothing, Rs 9.6 on footwear and Rs 28.80 on other personal items. The monthly cut-off given by the Planning Commission before the apex court was broken down using the Consumer Price Index of Industrial Workers for 2010-11 and the break down given in Annexure E of the Tendulkar Report of expenditure calculated at 2004-05 prices.

The new tentative BPL criteria was worked out by the Planning Commission and approved by the Prime Minister's office before the government's affidavit was submitted before the Supreme Court. The plan panel said the final poverty line criteria would be available after the completion of the NSSO survey of 2011-12.

[sgiitk 32]

I bet these numbers are derived from the Parliament Cafeteria!

[santanu@impaq 16]

I bet these numbers are derived from the Parliament Cafeteria!

" Parliament Cafeteria "

Nice one Dr Gupta

[csmart 472]

actually the person got confused between 4 and 9. the minister asked to check rates as on 97 (1997) , he thought it 47 (1947) as it was written on note by the minister.

Edited September 21, 2011 by csmart

[KumaarShah 143]

Let all the MPs and the govt. babus show an example of living on 32 bucks a day or 39 bucks a month. All Indians will surely follow them without any doubt. But let them make the start.

Hope the PM, HM, FM, DM etc are the first to set the example.

[Deepak Shankar 79]

Kumar ji they will say we will live with 32 bucks a day but it just needs one small minor addition i;e add a small letter c behind 32 and we shall be more than happy to live with 32c per day

[Rahul Always 87]

I think this entire issue has got confused. They must have been talking of 32 bucks as in $32 per day. It is the Indian media which has got it wrong as usual. Why blame the poor planning commission guys. After all, they have a wonderful leader in MMS and in addition, also Montek Singh Ahluwalia, both of whom are able to capture the pulse of the Indian public so well!

[amitnsonu 72]

to get pass in exam u need 33

to get pass in society u need only 32

[KapilAgrawal 340]

For Govt. MPs & MLA Salary of Rs 50,000+ EXTRAS monthly seem less. And for general man Rs. 32 per day in more than enough.

Congress has lost it. Seems like the prices taken are relative to 20 years back.

[city02 63]

the global definition of 'extreme poverty' is about $1/day or rs. 48 = rs 1,440 monthly

very poor is about GBP 1/day or rs 76 daily = rs 2,280 / mth

those should be the lowest limits for rural poor while in the top metros it should be double

[csmart 472]

in way its very calculated and smart move by the govt after considering city02 post.. he has mentioned that in urban, aprrox. 4550 should be BPL limit. this will bring lakhs of people working as peon, office boy, maids etc. under BPL. currently, peon salary in Mumbai ranges from 4 to 7k a month. so govt has to spend more on them.

[csmart 472]

Two entrepreneurs in Bangalore try living on $2 a day

Source: ndtv.com

Three weeks ago, two city-bred, upper-class aspiring entrepreneurs from Bangalore embarked on a mission: learn more about India, by subsisting for a month on what the average Indian does - just 100 rupees ($2.04) a day.

So far, Tushar Vashisht and Mathew Cherian, both 26, have lost nine pounds and four pounds, respectively, and complained of dizziness and depression from a lack of food. Milk is a treat, traveling more than five kilometers (3.1 miles) a day can blow their budget and saving money is incredibly difficult. They say they miss dental floss, deodorant and toilet paper.

"This has been a humbling experience," said Mr. Vashisht, a former investment banker with Deutsche Bank in San Francisco and Singapore, who says his banker lifestyle now seems "unreal." He said he plans to live on the average Indian's income one day a week for the rest of his life.

Mr. Vashisht and Mr. Cherian, a computer science graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have been tracking their "lifestyle experiment" on a Facebook page and a blog that breaks down their spending into pie-charts and graphs, and tracks their grocery shopping and caloric intake.

The two met when they were both working at the Unique Identification Authority of India, a government project that aims to assign a number to each Indian citizen, in part to make sure that subsidies reach the poor. Recently, they both quit their jobs there to start a company together, selling education and health care content to India's more than 600 million mobile phone users. The 100 rupees-a-day project is a way to help them better understand average Indians' choices, they said.

To arrive at the 100 rupees-a-day figure, they took India's average per capita income, which works out to 4,500 rupees a month, and subtracted one-third of their budget for rent.

Normally, they rent an apartment together in the Bangalore suburb of Bellandur, so they decided to move into a 10- by-6-foot room used by their landlord's household help, to replicate what they might be able to afford to rent on their combined budget of 3,000 rupees a month. That left them each 3,000 rupees a month, or 100 a day to spend on everything else, from food to Internet use to utilities. From their old lifestyle, they kept the clothes they were wearing, their laptop computers and a badminton set.

Their insights into the life of the average India, so far:

*A manual laborer in India's lower middle class requires 3,000 calories a day, but invariably receives less. If he wants to add calories, he has to load up on carbohydrates because "protein is ridiculously expensive," they observed.

*Addiction can cost dearly. "You smoke, you drink, you lose," said Mr. Cherian. A beedi (hand-rolled cigarette) or gutka (mix of betel nut and tobacco available in sachets) or alcohol addiction can add 30 to 50 rupees in daily costs and decimate the food budget, they say.

*Mr. Vashisht and Mr. Cherian could not afford to hire household help, which is a staple of every upper-middle-class Indian household. They found that cooking and cleaning, including hand-washing their clothing, could take them each three hours a day.

*Life, including work, home, school and shopping, must be conducted within a five-kilometer radius to be economical, and even then the bicycle is the only really affordable means of transport.

Any kind of economic shock, such as medical expenses, can be devastating. After three weeks, the two managed to save 350 rupees.

For their final week, they plan to subsist on 32 rupees a day, the spending limit India's Planning Commission set in a controversial affidavit filed with the Supreme Court to define the poor. Urban dwellers who spend at least 32 rupees (less than a dollar) a day on food, education and health care would not be counted as poor, the affidavit said, and would therefore be ineligible for government subsidies.

Using that poverty line, 37 percent of India's 1.2 billion are poor, but many say that line is unrealistically low.

For their last week, the two men will be living in the suburbs of Kottayam, a city in Kerala state, after investing their savings in two 140-rupee train tickets. They plan to cook over a wood fire, wash their clothes outdoors and drink well water.

After deducting the Planning Commission's estimated spending on rent, utilities and transport, they will have 17 rupees a day for food, about one-third what they have been spending over the past three weeks.

The "budget that planners have envisioned is not - even by a long shot - enough to have a filling, balanced diet," said Mr. Cherian. "Widespread undernourishment will have serious consequences to the future of India," he predicted.