Rangarajan Committee

The Rangarajan Committee refers most prominently to the Expert Group on the Methodology for Estimation of Poverty, constituted by the Planning Commission in June 2012 under the chairmanship of Dr. C. Rangarajan, then Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council. It was set up to review and replace the controversial Tendulkar methodology (2009), whose poverty lines — notably the figures of ₹27 (rural) and ₹33 (urban) per capita per day cited before the Supreme Court in 2011–12 — had provoked widespread public criticism for understating deprivation. The committee submitted its report in June 2014. Note that C. Rangarajan also chaired other influential bodies, including committees on disinvestment (1993) and the pricing of petroleum products, but in UPSC economy and society contexts the term overwhelmingly denotes the 2012–14 poverty-line panel.

The committee abandoned the calorie-anchored, expenditure-class approach and moved to a methodology combining normative food requirements with essential non-food expenditure on education, health, clothing, rent, and transport, drawing on both Modified Mixed Recall Period (MMRP) consumption data from the NSSO. It fixed the poverty line at ₹972 per person per month in rural areas and ₹1,407 per month in urban areas (2011–12 prices), translating to roughly ₹32 per day rural and ₹47 per day urban. Crucially, it also recommended a separate poverty line basket (PLB) and suggested examining a class of households below the line on dimensions beyond income, distinguishing it from the single-line Tendulkar approach.

Applying these higher thresholds, the committee estimated that 29.5% of India's population (about 363 million people) were poor in 2011–12, compared with the Tendulkar figure of 21.9% (about 270 million) for the same year. It thus added roughly 93 million persons to the poverty count. The report was submitted to a government that had by then changed; the NITI Aayog, which replaced the Planning Commission in 2015, neither formally adopted nor rejected the Rangarajan estimates, and India has since lacked an officially accepted updated national poverty line. Subsequent measurement debates have shifted toward NITI Aayog's National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), modelled on the OPHI–UNDP global MPI, with its 2023 and 2024 discussion papers reporting sharp falls in multidimensional poverty.

For the exam, the Rangarajan Committee is high-yield in UPSC General Studies Paper III (Indian Economy — inclusive growth, poverty and hunger) and GS Paper I / Indian Society (issues of poverty and developmental measurement). Prelims questions test exact numbers — the ₹972/₹1,407 lines and the 29.5% headcount — and the contrast with the Tendulkar (Suresh Tendulkar) and earlier Lakdawala committee methodologies. Mains answers should situate it within the lineage of poverty-line committees, evaluate the consumption-versus-multidimensional debate, and note that no government has officially adopted its figures, leaving the MPI as the de facto contemporary metric. Candidates should also distinguish this Rangarajan poverty panel from his other committees to avoid factual error.