Glass half empty

The latest living standards survey points to all the ways the Nepali state fails to invest in its citizens.

The just published Fourth Nepal Living Standards Survey 2022-23 offers a mixed picture of poverty reduction over the past 12 years. The survey says the percent of people living below the poverty line declined from 25 percent to 20 percent of the population in the period. This reduction fell woefully short of the government target of bringing the number down to a single digit. Yet that is not the full story either. Back in 2010-11, when the third survey was last carried out, the per person per year poverty line was set at Rs 19,261, which, adjusted for inflation, would today come to Rs 42,845. But then Nepal recently revised its poverty line, which is now set at Rs 72,000. This is basically a way of saying that a person would need Rs 72,000 a year to meet their basic needs. According to the National Statistics Office, had the old baseline of Rs 42,845 been retained and had there been no revision in the basket of goods and services used to measure poverty, the rate would have plummeted to 3.57 percent.