The conspiracy of poverty identification is a big challenge to eliminating chronic hunger. Actually the present estimation by the Planning Commission says poverty in India is reducing, it seems they have a mandate to make it possible and they perform their work of reduction in poverty by putting people in statistical formulas. It says the URPConsumption distribution data of the 61 st Round yields a poverty ration of 28.3 percent in the rural areas, 25.7% in the urban areas and 27.5% for the country as a whole in 200405. The Poverty line (implicit) at allIndia level is worked out from the expenditure class – wise distribution of persons (based on URP consumption, that is, consumption data collected from 30days recall period for all items) and the poverty ratio at allIndia level. Actually during the poverty estimation, on the one hand, locally available items from forest or agriculture retained for consumption by farmers or Tribals are also valued at prevailing prices, and added to expenditure on nonfood items to give the total monthly per capita expenditure. And on the other hand the cost of items and services (dwellings or Health or Education) are counted at the lowest price without considering the inflation, which actually affects the life at large level. It is all about the how societies settle their needs, either they should have enough income or they should have rights over natural resources. In both the terms, Madhya Pradesh could not perform. There has been no land reform, but we know how it worked in Kerala and changed the life a bit. In fact southern states have been progressive in providing social security to the marginalized sections, thanks to their political willingness!! One should know that olds age destitute can go to school and get mid day meal with dignity in Tamilnadu. These are not the schemes just meant to get election mileage.

The Planning Commission estimates that in Madhya Pradesh, a family spending Rs 327.78 per person per month in rural settlement will be considered as poor. In Urban settlement, the expenditure level is Rs 570.15 per person per month. In other words, it means, a person spending anything more then Rs 9 every day in a village or Rs 19 in any kind of urban area, will not be identified as poor and will be out of Poverty elimination programs. At allIndia level, the poverty line represents the expenditure level of Rs. 356.30 in rural areas and Rs. 538.60 in urban area per person per month. No person can survive at this level of expenditure at all. Thisis basically Starvation Line, rather ten Poverty line.

Now it may not be a coincident that Madhya Pradesh has lowest and continuously declining food consumption, highest Malnutrition, Highest Infant Mortality and Lowest Life expectancy of 57.7 years, much lower then Kerala’s 73.9 Years. It just not merely an issue relating to unavailability of Health institutions or any other institution, these conditions shows the Insecurity and Invisibalisation of poverty within the State framework. It also reflects that avoidance of fundamental issues of exclusion, disobedience of community knowledge, threat to agriculture, unaccounted exploitation of natural resource for revenue generation and colonial way of addressing development has pushed the larger society on margins and a few became the center in the politics of development.

While looking at various contexts, political visionaries need to emphasize the policies to enhance people’s capabilities to lead a life for which they have a reason to value or their entitlements for such! There has been half – heartened effort by the governments to ensure food supply through ensured food subsidies or proper functioning of PDS. In a larger framework, new politics talks about making agriculture a profitable business; it means they are talking about AgriBusiness, not about AgriCulture.

As far as policies are concerned, there seems only dark tunnel with assurance of no light even at the end of it! The state has failed in introducing any such policy to reduce the structural imbalances in agriculture and improve purchasing power of the people through sustained means of livelihood. This is nothing but a structural imbalance where you have more population (67%) contributing less (18%) in a gross domestic product. Where are the efforts to reduce this phenomenon? It‘s nonnegotiable fact now that we need to reexamine the definition of poverty, which only prefers expenditure and consumption based indicators and leaves income with dignity aspects. It has a gross impact on poverty and food insecurity elevation programs, because in society where large part of the daily needs in rural families come out from the forest, agriculture, self production or community management, but Government calculates these receiving in monetary terms and then says their spending is big and they are not poor. It may be an appropriate analysis that in present development spheres, Human and Natural Resources are considered essential for development, but the concept of exclusion and capability deprivation has been put a side in policy spheres, and so why we find no change in the situation and the cycle of poverty goes on. We may expect some quality changes after the honest implementation of Forest Rights Act, which is meant to hand over the rights on the resources to the around lac indanger indigenous and other forest dwelling families.