Previous Year Question

The Planning Commission constituted the Task Force on Projections of Minimum Needs and Effective Consumption Demand under the chairmanship of Y. K. Alagh. The Task Force submitted its report in 1979.

The poverty-line methodology of the Alagh Task Force was based primarily on nutritional requirements, particularly calorie requirements.

It specified different minimum calorie norms for rural and urban populations—

Rural areas → 2,400 kilocalories per person per day

Urban areas → 2,100 kilocalories per person per day

It then estimated the per capita consumption expenditure required for a consumption basket capable of providing these calorie requirements.

At 1973-74 prices, this methodology produced poverty lines of approximately—

Rural → ₹49.09 per person per month

Urban → ₹56.64 per person per month

The distinction among the four Committees is important—

Alagh Committee → Poverty line based on nutritional/calorie requirements

Lakdawala Committee → Broadly retained Alagh's calorie norms while developing State-specific poverty lines using price indices

Tendulkar Committee → Moved away from directly anchoring the poverty line to the old calorie-intake norm and adopted a broader consumption-expenditure approach

Rangarajan Committee → Used a revised consumption basket covering both food and non-food requirements