New Delhi: Over two years, the number of families below the poverty line (BPL) rose by 1,359 in Gujarat, a state praised for its growth model. The district of Amreli witnessed the highest rise in the number of BPL families, an increase of 425.
The state government furnished the numbers in response to several questions raised at the Gujarat Legislative Assembly on March 21.
The government takes into account several social and economic factors to estimate the poverty line based on household incomes and consumption levels, and determines a limit which indicates the economic status of households. The government uses this to determine whether a household requires financial assistance from the state or not.
For 2011-12, the national poverty line (using the Suresh Tendulkar Committee methodology) was estimated at Rs 816 per capita per month for rural areas and Rs 1,000 per capita per month for urban areas. This amounts to a daily expenditure of Rs 27.2 in rural areas and Rs 33.3 in urban areas. Poverty lines, however, vary between states due to inter-state differences in prices. Based on the 2011-12 data, Gujarat’s poverty line is at Rs 932 per month for rural areas, and Rs.1,152 for urban areas respectively, reported LiveMint in 2014.
As per government records submitted by the State Government at the Assembly in response to several questions during Question Hour at the Gujarat Legislative Assembly on March 21, Gujarat is home to more than 31.67 lakh families below the poverty line (BPL) as of January 31 this year. Eleven families were removed from the BPL list in 2021 and 2022, the answers also confirmed. As of January 31 2023, the number of families living below the poverty line in Gujarat has increased by 1,359 in the last two years.
At 425, Amreli district registered the highest number of new BPL families during this time, followed by the districts of Sabarkantha (301), Banaskanta (199), Anand (168) and Junagadh (149), as per the records shared by the state government, reported the Indian Express.
It is “painful” to have such numbers of poor families in a state that people claim is “developed” and whose development model is made an example of before the country and the world, professor and economist Hemant Kumar Shah told the New Indian Express.
After providing huge incentives to corporate units as part of the Gujarat model of development between 2002 and 2011 – which in turn caused a spurt in Gujarat’s growth rate – the government was “left with limited funds for education, health, environment and employment for the masses”, wrote Indira Hirway, Director and Professor of Economics at the Centre for Development Alternatives (CFDA), Ahmedabad, in The Wire in 2017. The “net result” was that 40% of the population was below the multidimensional poverty line, she wrote then.
The number of families living below the poverty line rose by 2,556 in 2020-21, reported the Indian Express last year.