Poverty Line - Another Flip-Flop from the Government

The poverty-line affidavit submitted by the planning commission in the Supreme Court of India has become another flip-flip opportunity for the Congress led UPA Government at the center in India.

It may be recollected that the Planning Commission had submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court in September 2011 in which it had mentioned that an urban Indian needed Rs 32 per day while his rural counterpart required Rs 26 to make both ends meet. The Planning Commission had faced a lot of criticism for the poverty lines defined in the affidavit.

Now, the flip-flop specialist Government of India is once again readying itself to go back on this stand. Today after a series of meetings with representatives of the government including the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Planning Commission Chairman Montek Singh held a press conference together with Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Rural Development, in which they have stated that a new formula will be evolved to determine the poverty level -

i.e., The government is clearly once again in a mood to do a flip-flop in its stand within 2 weeks for having taken one. To support his flip-flop the government is spending crores to carry out what it is calling a Socio-Economic and Caste-Economic census.