Prices, Price Indexes and Poverty Counts in India during 1980s and 1990s: Calculation of Unit Value Consumer Price Indexes

This is the first part of three papers in which we revisit issues surrounding poverty calculations in India during the 1980s, and 1990s. A number of recent papers have put forward or endorsed Poverty calculations based on poverty lines computed using Unit Values. (expenditure divided by quantity) of food. And fuel and light items in the National Sample Survey Consumer Expenditure Surveys, which they suggest are more plausible than those produced by the Indian Planning Commission. Others have criticised a growing gap between money-metric poverty based on poverty lines and food poverty based on normative calorie consumption levels.