Poverty

Poverty estimates

There has been no uniform measure of poverty in India[2][3]. The Planning Commission of India has accepted the Tendulkar Committee report which says that 37% of people in India live below the poverty line.[4]
The Arjun Sengupta Report (from National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector) states that 77% of Indians live on less than   20 a day (about $0.50 per day)[5], also N.C. Saxena Committee report states that 50% of Indians live below the poverty line.
A study by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative using a Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) found that there were 645 million[6] poor living under the MPI in India, 421 million of whom are concentrated in eight North Indian and East Indian states of Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. This number is higher than the 410 million poor living in the 26 poorest African nations.[7]
Estimates by NCAER (National Council of Applied Economic Research) show that 48% of the Indian households earn more than 90,000 (US$1,998) annually (or more than US$ 3 PPP per person). According to NCAER, in 2009, of the 222 million households in India, the absolutely poor households (annual incomes below   45,000) accounted for only 15.6% of them or about 35 million (about 200 million Indians). Another 80 million households are in income levels of   45,000– 90,000 per year. These numbers also are more or less in line with the latest World Bank estimates of the “below-the-poverty-line” households that may total about 100 million (or about 456 million individuals)[8]
The World Bank estimates that 80% of India's population lives on less than $2 a day[9][10] which means a higher proportion of its population lives on less than $2 per day as compared with sub-Saharan Africa.[10]
[edit]Impact of poverty

Since the 1950s, the Indian government and non-governmental organizations have initiated several programs to alleviate poverty,...