Tendulkar Committee

The Tendulkar Committee — formally the Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Estimation of Poverty, chaired by economist Suresh Tendulkar — was constituted by the Planning Commission of India in December 2005 and submitted its report in November 2009. It was set up to address criticism of the earlier Lakdawala Committee (1993) methodology, which anchored poverty estimation to a fixed calorie norm (2,400 kcal per capita per day in rural areas and 2,100 kcal in urban areas) and used outdated state-specific price indices. The Tendulkar approach moved away from the calorie anchor toward a wider consumption basket that explicitly incorporated expenditure on health and education alongside food, recognising that the original calorie-based lines no longer reflected actual consumption patterns revealed by National Sample Survey (NSS) data.

Methodologically, the committee adopted the Mixed Reference Period (MRP) for consumption data instead of the older Uniform Reference Period (URP), and it took the existing all-India urban poverty line basket as the reference, applying it uniformly across rural and urban areas to ensure consistency. It used Tendulkar poverty lines expressed as monthly per-capita consumption expenditure: based on 2004–05 prices, the lines worked out to roughly ₹447 per month in rural areas and ₹579 in urban areas. The committee's recalibration raised the official poverty headcount ratio for 2004–05 to about 37.2 per cent (rural 41.8 per cent, urban 25.7 per cent), substantially higher than the Lakdawala-based figure of around 27.5 per cent, because the new basket reflected higher real costs of a minimally acceptable standard of living.

These estimates became the basis for subsequent official poverty figures: using Tendulkar lines, poverty was estimated at about 29.8 per cent in 2009–10 and 21.9 per cent in 2011–12. The methodology drew sustained public criticism for setting the line too low — the figure of roughly ₹27 (rural) and ₹33 (urban) per person per day cited around 2011–12 provoked political controversy. This led the Planning Commission to appoint the Rangarajan Committee (2012, reported 2014), which raised the thresholds further (to about ₹972 rural and ₹1,407 urban per capita per month for 2011–12) and estimated poverty at 29.5 per cent. The Rangarajan figures were never formally adopted as the official line, and with the dissolution of the Planning Commission and creation of NITI Aayog (2015), India's poverty-line debate remained unresolved into 2026, with the NITI Aayog Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), based on the Alkire-Foster method, gaining prominence as a complementary measure.

For the UPSC examination, the Tendulkar Committee is a staple of General Studies Paper III (Indian Economy — inclusive growth, poverty and hunger) and overlaps with GS Paper I (Indian Society — issues of poverty). Prelims questions test the chairperson, the year, and the methodological shift from calorie norms to a consumption basket; Mains answers frequently require candidates to compare the Lakdawala, Tendulkar and Rangarajan thresholds, evaluate the limitations of monetary poverty lines, and argue for multidimensional measurement. Knowing the precise headcount revisions and the sequence of committees is essential for high-scoring responses.