The paper provides an overview of the methodologies used by the Indian Planning Commission in the past 30 years. Using the Planning Commission poverty line, the paper computes poverty and inequality indices from the large sample surveys of NSS consumer expenditure data and demonstrates that the...

Poverty reduction remains a major development challenge in much of Asia and the Pacific. Historically, technology has played a central role in raising living standards across the region, including those of the poor. The Green Revolution and various innovations of modern medicine and public...