About 10% of rural India lives on less than Rs17 a day: NSSO survey

MDT/PTI 01 August 2012

According to the National Sample Survey Organisation, poorest 10% from rural India had an average monthly per capita expenditure of Rs503.49, while the same in urban areas comes to Rs702.26 or Rs23.4 a day

New Delhi: Two decades of economic reforms and drum beating about inclusive growth seem to have failed to change the face of rural India as 10% of the population live on less than Rs17 a day, reports PTI.

According to a 2011-12 government survey on household consumer expenditure, "The poorest 10% of India's rural population had an average monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) of Rs503.49 per month."

Their urban counterparts are only slightly better with daily per capita expenditure of Rs23.40.

As per the National Sample Survey Organisation's (NSSO) 68th round of survey for the period of July 2011 to June 2012, "The poorest 10% of the urban population had an average MPCE of Rs702.26."

The survey, which was conducted two decades after the economic reforms were launched in 1991, is aimed at measuring the living standards of people in the country.

This is in fact much lower than the poverty line of Rs28.65 per capita daily consumption in cities and Rs22.42 in rural areas fixed by the Planning Commission for 2009-11 as released in March this year.

In urban areas, it said, 70% of the population live on a daily expenditure of about Rs43.16. Although the person belonging to the top 20% of population consumes more than Rs100 a day.

As regards the rural areas, the survey said, half of the population was living on a per capita daily expenditure of Rs34.33.

"In rural areas, half of the population belong to households with MPCE below Rs1,030 and nearly 40% of the rural population had MCPE of below Rs 922," the survey said.

The provisional results of the NSS survey are based on sample of 59,070 households in 7,391 villages and 41,602 households in 5,223 urban blocks.

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