Poverty

I've previously considered just what is the lowest livable income in India. At the time the lowest salary I'd encountered was Rs50 per day, but I did wonder if in some areas you could get enough food to survive for Rs20 to Rs30 per day. Since then I have learned a bit more to qualify this, for example the price of 1kg of rice is about Rs30 in Gujarat, but there is more to living. The Indian governments definition of poverty is somewhat lower, setting the poverty line at Rs18 in cities and Rs12 in rural areas, per person, per day. This is clearly too low, and even the newspaper which repeated this fact comments that this isn't enough to afford government subsidised rice. I suspect this low estimate comes from two different problems; the failure of most government set prices to track inflation (which is at least 9% in India, or an increase of 136% per decade), and a very low threshold for poverty. Possibly the original threshold only covers enough food to eat. This is far below poverty, and the flaws of this measurement have been recognised for over 100 years in the UK, with the Rowntree foundations poverty line as just one example of the alternatives (ignoring percentile based definitions). Instead clothing, housing, medicines and even some basic items necessary for participation in society are considered a necessity. When mentioning that a mobile phone is considered a necessity you will encounter the abhorrent fiscal fascists who believe that it is somehow necessary for capitalism that the people at the bottom of the pile should suffer. But even in India this will become a necessity within a few years, fixed lines aren't really used and mobile banking is promoted. That's ignoring the number of services which can only be booked with a valid mobile number. Perhaps Rs50 is even too low for the poverty line... the figures might look rather worse if the official threshold is adjusted