NEW DELHI: More than 25 of the top economists of the country have written an open letter against the Planning Commission poverty line and said that the public distribution system should be universalised.
"We do not consider the official national poverty lines set by the Planning Commission, at Rs 32 and Rs 26 per capita per day for urban and rural areas respectively, to be acceptable benchmarks to measure the extent of poverty in India," they have said.
After the party, the opposition and civil society have collectively slammed the Plan panel affidavit to the Supreme Court, it's now the turn of economists and academics to point out that academic debates about poverty line can continue but poverty estimates should not be linked to the entitlements of the poor. "It is unacceptable and counterproductive to link the official poverty estimates to basic entitlements of the people, especially access to food," they have written.
The signatories include S K Thorat, Prabhat Patnaik, Y K Alagh, Jayanti Ghosh, S Mahendra Dev, Pulin Nayak and Amiya Kumar Bagchi.
Advocating undoing the targeted approach for public distribution system, they have written, "It is also widely recognised that the targeted Public Distribution System introduced since 1997 has done more harm than good by creating divisions even among the poor and has led to massive errors of exclusion. Recent evidence clearly establishes that states which have moved towards near universalisation of the PDS have performed much better in increasing offtake and reducing leakages."
With the National Food Security Bill pending, the academics have written, "Restoring the universal PDS appears to us is the best way forward in combating hunger and poverty. This is not only feasible within the available fiscal space of the Union government but must be a policy priority in the backdrop of high and persistent food price inflation."
After the panel's affidavit brought all around criticism, some Plan panel members have tried hard to distinguish between the poverty line and actual method of identifying beneficiaries but insiders say the matter is still to be decided within the Planning Commission or be dealt with in consultation with the government at large.
"We do not consider the official national poverty lines set by the Planning Commission, at Rs 32 and Rs 26 per capita per day for urban and rural areas respectively, to be acceptable benchmarks to measure the extent of poverty in India," they have said.
After the party, the opposition and civil society have collectively slammed the Plan panel affidavit to the Supreme Court, it's now the turn of economists and academics to point out that academic debates about poverty line can continue but poverty estimates should not be linked to the entitlements of the poor. "It is unacceptable and counterproductive to link the official poverty estimates to basic entitlements of the people, especially access to food," they have written.
The signatories include S K Thorat, Prabhat Patnaik, Y K Alagh, Jayanti Ghosh, S Mahendra Dev, Pulin Nayak and Amiya Kumar Bagchi.
Advocating undoing the targeted approach for public distribution system, they have written, "It is also widely recognised that the targeted Public Distribution System introduced since 1997 has done more harm than good by creating divisions even among the poor and has led to massive errors of exclusion. Recent evidence clearly establishes that states which have moved towards near universalisation of the PDS have performed much better in increasing offtake and reducing leakages."
With the National Food Security Bill pending, the academics have written, "Restoring the universal PDS appears to us is the best way forward in combating hunger and poverty. This is not only feasible within the available fiscal space of the Union government but must be a policy priority in the backdrop of high and persistent food price inflation."
After the panel's affidavit brought all around criticism, some Plan panel members have tried hard to distinguish between the poverty line and actual method of identifying beneficiaries but insiders say the matter is still to be decided within the Planning Commission or be dealt with in consultation with the government at large.
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