( Financial Times ) -- Prime minister Manmohan Singh faces a growing political storm over how to measure poverty in India amid fears that new benchmarks proposed by a powerful policymaking body could see many of the country 's poor lose their welfare benefits . The poverty line estimates in India , traditionally worked out by calorie intake , are highly sensitive because as many as 400m Indians live on less than $ 2 a day . Those below the poverty line are entitled to subsidised food and other welfare payments . But new benchmarks by the Planning Commission , submitted in an affidavit to the Supreme Court as part of new food security legislation , suggest that a person living on more than Rs32 ( $ 0.64 ) a day in urban areas , like New Delhi and Mumbai , would no longer be classified as being below the poverty line . The threshold for rural areas would be Rs26 a day . By comparison , the World Bank 's poverty line is $ 1.25 a day . India is now home to more poor people than the entire sub-Saharan Africa region . Two years ago , a government appointed commission estimated that one in three Indians live below the poverty line . The commission 's estimate was higher than an earlier Planning Commission estimate of 28 per cent of the population . But Montek Singh Ahluwalia , the respected economist who is now the Planning Commission 's deputy chairman , has argued that up-to-date data will show that India has made considerable progress in reducing poverty levels . The proposed new benchmarks have angered leaders across India 's political spectrum . They have also opened India 's two most respected government economists -- Mr Singh and Mr Ahluwalia -- up to criticism that they are out of touch with the poor in India , who are struggling with the highest inflation of any large emerging market . Yashwant Sinha , a former finance minister and Bharatiya Janata party leader , lambasted poverty threshold estimates put forward by the Planning Commission as `` laughable '' . Mr Sinha derided the body 's calculations as having exposed Mr Singh , who cuts an increasingly solitary figure in his cabinet after a year battling high profile scandals , as insensitive to what was `` a matter of life and death '' for many people and the cause of violence across India . `` Neither the prime minister nor the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission has any real idea of poverty . They rarely go to the villages and interact with the poor , '' Mr Sinha said . The benchmarks have also divided the Planning Commission itself . A senior member of the commission told the Financial Times that the poverty line figures should not have been included in the affidavit . He said the government had to do better on how it communicated economic policy to the country 's 1.2bn people . `` I would n't have put these numbers in , '' he said . `` You ca n't [ as an economic planner in India ] get on your high horse of economic rationalism . '' Senior Congress party ministers have also raised objections . Jairam Ramesh , the minister for rural development and a close ally of Congress party president Sonia Gandhi , has written to Mr Ahluwalia asking him to consider alternative measurements and warning of possible confrontation . A.K . Shivakumar , a member of the National Advisory Council chaired by Mrs Gandhi , said Rs32 a day went nowhere in India 's fast-growing cities where rents are high and food inflation in double digits . © The Financial Times Limited 2011 .
Indian prime minister faced a growing political debate over how to tackle poverty . Proposed policy changes could lead to many of India 's poor losing their homes . India is home to more poor people than the entire sub - Saharan Africa region .