BHUBANESWAR: Political parties cutting across party lines criticised the Planning Commission’s controversial poverty line figure. BJP State president Jual Oram said it was a cruel joke on the poverty-stricken people. When prices of essential commodities are sky high and there is no let-up from price rise, the poverty line figure of Rs. 32 a day for urban areas and Rs. 26 for rural areas is nothing but ridiculous. ‘Determination of poverty level is a statistical jugglery by the bureaucrats who have no practical knowledge of the ground reality,’ remarked senior BJD leader and former minister Damodar Rout. People who have been assigned the job to determine the poverty do not know the reality prevailing in the country side. They depend on the statistics which are far from facts. Food habits, work culture, religious faith and social customs of the people should be taken into consideration while determining the poverty. But this was never done, Rout said. The Centre issued guidelines to the states without realising that the same set of guidelines cannot be implemented uniformly across the country because of the diverse socio-cultural patterns. The determination of poverty level on monetary terms is absolutely absurd and this should be rejected by the states, he said. President of the Utkal Bharati Party Kharabela Swain said that the Congress-led UPA Government had started competing with the states in playing BPL card as a vote bank politics. Opposed to the ` 2-a-kg rice scheme in the State, Swain said the Congress was divided on the issue of BPL determination. While Congress president and chairman of National Advisory Council (NAC) Sonia Gandhi is putting pressure on the UPA Government to cover more people under BPL category, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia are trying to raise the cap so that there will be less financial burden on the national exchequer. He advised the Government to stop playing BPL politics which is going to cripple the national economy. Farmers have already experienced acute shortage of farm hands for agricultural activities and the Rs. 2-a-kg rice is the major culprit, he said.Congress chief whip Prasad Harichandan said he had not fully agreed to the plan panel’s poverty line figure given the prevailing market condition. Though the plan panel has taken factors like food consumption, health, education and sanitation into consideration, the national sample survey needs to be broad based to get a more accurate picture of the socio-economic condition of the people.
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