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...

Following a comprehensive overview by the editor, this book offers a detailed assessment of the results of directly channelling resources to the poor and extensively discusses the experience of five Asian countries--India, Indonesia, the People's Republic of China, the Philippines and Thailand