---
title: "Poverty, Development & India's Social Sector"
description: "Understand poverty measurement, development models and India's social sector, from the Tendulkar and Rangarajan lines to MGNREGA, NFSA and multidimensional"
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/lessons/upsc-indian-society-poverty-development-the-social-sector"
---

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Poverty, development & the social sector

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# Poverty, development & the social sector

Poverty measurement, development models and India's social sector architecture—from Tendulkar/Rangarajan lines to MGNREGA, NFSA and multidimensional poverty—for UPSC GS-1.

## From the calorie norm to multidimensional poverty

Poverty measurement in India has been a contested statistical and political enterprise since independence. The original yardstick, fixed by the Planning Commission's 1979 Task Force (Y.K. Alagh), was a calorie norm—2,400 kcal per person per day in rural areas and 2,100 kcal in urban areas—translated into a monetary poverty line. The **Lakdawala Committee (1993)** retained the calorie anchor but updated price indices, generating separate state-level lines.

The **Tendulkar Committee (2009)** broke from pure calorie counting, adopting a Mixed Reference Period and a basket including health and education. It pegged poverty at roughly Rs. 27 (rural) and Rs. 33 (urban) per capita per day for 2011-12, estimating 21.9% of Indians below the line—a figure ridiculed in Parliament as too austere. The **Rangarajan Committee (2014)** raised the thresholds to Rs. 32 (rural) and Rs. 47 (urban), lifting the headcount to 29.5% for 2011-12. No official income-poverty estimate has been published since, because the 2017-18 NSSO Consumption Expenditure Survey was junked over data-quality concerns; the 2022-23 Household Consumption Expenditure Survey has since revived the series.

## The multidimensional turn

Global practice shifted from income to capabilities, drawing on Amartya Sen's framework. NITI Aayog's **National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)**, built on the OPHI–UNDP Alkire-Foster method, uses 12 indicators across three dimensions—health, education and standard of living. The 2023 report (using NFHS-5, 2019-21) found 14.96% of Indians multidimensionally poor, down from 24.85% in 2015-16, implying about 135 million people exited multidimensional poverty in five years. Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh remained the poorest states.

## Why measurement is politics

The poverty line is not academic: it determines entitlement. Below-Poverty-Line (BPL) status historically gated subsidised PDS grain, Antyodaya cards and welfare access, so a lower line shrinks the welfare net. The **Saxena Committee (2009)** and the **Hashim Committee (2012)** on urban poverty recommended exclusion/inclusion criteria for BPL identification, eventually feeding the **Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011**, which replaced the BPL survey with automatic inclusion/exclusion parameters. SECC data now drives PM-Awas, Ujjwala and Ayushman Bharat targeting.

Key high-yield facts to retain: the calorie norms (2,400/2,100 kcal); the committee sequence Alagh→Lakdawala→Tendulkar→Rangarajan; the MPI's 12 indicators and the 14.96% (2023) figure; and that SECC 2011, not a poverty line, now identifies beneficiaries. Candidates should be able to argue why consumption-based and capability-based measures yield divergent conclusions, and why the absence of an official income-poverty estimate after 2011-12 is itself an exam-worthy governance gap.

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