Despite the fact that the Planning Commission, which spent Rs 35 lakh to furnish a toilet in its headquarters recently, has made a mockery of the poor, the fact is that there is has been a decline in the absolute number of the poor—whether you subsist with Rs 27 or Rs 33 is a different matter altogether. But a poll-bound opposition cannot stomach those anything that is good coming in from a government that has long ago ceased to be legitimate. The Opposition BJP and the Left have charged the government with making mockery of poor to restore its "credibility" ahead of the general elections, escalating the political slugfest over official estimates that poverty levels have shrunk in the last seven years.
The Congress on its part expressed dismay that any political party can really quibble over poverty levels coming down even as the government said the latest estimates are just a preliminary assessment by an expert group. According to the Plan panel, the number of people living below the poverty line has shrunk to 21.9 percent in 2011-12 from 37.2 per cent in 2004-05. BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi charged the government with making a mockery of the plight of the poor and misleading them in a bid to cover less people under the Food Security Act. "The poverty estimate proves that the government defines poverty as per its whims and fancy. It increases the number of the poor or decreases it as and when it wants," Joshi said, adding with the Centre maintaining there are very less number of BPL people the burden will fall on the states when the Food Bill is passed.
The CPM said the estimates make "a mockery of life and death struggles" of the people, amidst continuous rise in prices and "massive" slashing of subsidies for the poor. Maintaining that the government is carrying out an "exercise of deceit" before elections to show that the poor have benefited during its tenure, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury said, "the manner in which this has been done only reconfirms an English adage–there are lies, damned lies and statistics." The CPI said the Planning Commission is "perpetuating fraud" on poverty line to restore the image and credibility of the government ahead of the general elections. Union minister Manish Tewari said while any political party will be proud of dwindling number of poor in the nation, it is surprising that some parties raise objections as to why the poverty rate is coming down. Planning minister Rajeev Shukla said the latest estimates are just a preliminary assessment by an expert group and BJP has no right to disown it as the number of the poor has dwindled faster during UPA regime.
