A survey by the Indian government in 2002 to determine households below poverty line (BPL) left out many poor families. Nearly a decade later, the Union Ministry of Rural Development (MORD) is trying to set the wrong right. But it is unable to decide on the criteria for identifying poor households. As a consequence, the BPL survey that was to begin in April this year has been rescheduled for June.

The livelihood options of landless households of far western Nepal are wage labor, farming and seasonal migration to India. Food sufficiency is barely enough for 0-3 months a year for most. When food is scarce, they cope by borrowing money, buying food, occasional wager labor as domestic servants, less popular and cheaper or wild food, skipping meals and eating less. These options are embedded with social relation in terms of class, caste and gender and social institutions.

The manner in which rights at work have been identified and articulated within both the International Labour Organisation and India since the founding of the agency in 1919, bears a close similarity.

With the help of the 2004-05 National Sample Survey Organisation unit level consumption expenditure data, this paper tries to estimate the extent of inclusion and exclusion errors in the identification of below-thepoverty line households.

Poverty is more than just material deprivation, it is a state of mind – says writer Martin Kämpchen, who