🗞️ Why in News India launched its first-ever survey to directly calculate household “profits,” asset values, and welfare benefits — a pivotal shift from expenditure-based poverty measurement.
Significance
- India previously relied on expenditure surveys (last official poverty estimate: 2012; poverty line update: 2014)
- Past pilot tests (1955, 1983) and August 2025 pre-test all failed
What It Measures
- Household incomes and expenditures; farmer input/output costs; tax payments and loan burdens
- Investment earnings; irregular and multiple income sources; welfare benefits; household assets
Challenges (2025 Pre-Test)
- ~95% respondent hesitation on income disclosure
- Similar proportion refused tax information revelation
- Expenditures overstated, incomes understated — threatens deeply flawed macroeconomic data
- Respondent unawareness of small/irregular earnings (interest, dividends)
UPSC Angle
- GS3: Poverty measurement, data governance, statistics, macroeconomic planning