If you are following the recent discussion in the media about the definition of poverty line, you'll see that you are poor only if your monthly spending is below Rs.781, or rather, your daily spending is below Rs. 26. Now note that this is not just for food. This spending includes everything, including what is known as non-food essentials. Utsa Patnaik, an Economics Professor of JNU, in an article in "The Hindu" today, highlights how this money is not enough even to get the basic nutrition, leave alone the non-essentials.
I am reminded of the story of a man who was walking in the forest and saw a bulls-eye on every tree, and an arrow struck right at the bulls-eye! He was amazed! Finally, I am going to meet the world's best archer! Then he saw a little boy, with a quiver full of arrows, shooting an arrow to another tree. Before the man could reach the boy, he saw the boy running to the tree, and drawing a circle around the arrow, with the arrow as the center of the bulls-eye!
Why do we do such games of cooking numbers by creating meaningless definitions? Aren't there more obvious ways of defining who poor, or is it turning out to be very difficult? New dictionaries, new standards, new arithmetics cannot solve real hunger!
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