Data and Dogma: The Great Indian Poverty Debate

What happened to poverty in India in the 1990s has been fiercelydebated, both politically and statistically. The debate hasrun parallel to the wider debate about globalization and povertyin the 1990s and is also an important part of that debate. Theeconomic reforms of the early 1990s in India were followed byrates of economic growth that were high by historical standards.The effects on poverty remain controversial, however. The officialnumbers published by the government of India, showing an accelerationin the rate of poverty reduction from 36 percent of the populationin 1993/94 to 26 percent in 1999/2000, have been challengedfor showing both too little and too much poverty reduction.The various claims have often been frankly political, but thereare also many important statistical issues. The debate, reviewedin this article, provides an excellent example of how politicsand statistics interact in an important, largely domestic debate.Although there is no consensus on what happened to poverty inIndia in the 1990s, there is good evidence both that povertyfell and that the official estimates of poverty reduction aretoo optimistic, particularly for rural India. The issues coveredin this article, although concerned with the measurement ofpoverty in India, have wide international relevance—discrepanciesbetween surveys and national accounts, the effects of questionnairedesign, reporting periods, survey nonresponse, repair of imperfectdata, choice of poverty lines, and interplay between statisticsand politics.