NEW DELHI, Aug 1: Forty per cent of rural India lives on Rs 33 a day, official data showed on Wednesday, exposing the hollowness of the tall claims of economic reforms and inclusive growth.

According to data released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), the bottom 10 per cent people in rural India lived on just Rs 16.78 per day in the 2011-12 financial year. “The poorest 10 per cent of India’s rural population had an average monthly per capita expenditure of Rs 503.49,” the NSSO said.

In rural India, half of the population belonged to households with monthly per capita expenditure below Rs1,030 and nearly 40 per cent of the rural population had monthly per capita expenditure below Rs 922. The situation is not very different in urban areas as well.

The poorest 10 per cent of the urban population had an average monthly per capita expenditure of Rs 702.26. It means the bottom 10 per cent people in urban areas live on Rs 23.40 per day.

The top 10 per cent of the rural population, ranked by monthly per capita expenditure, had an average monthly per capita expenditure of Rs 3,459.77, about 6.9 times that of the bottom 10 per cent. The top 10 per cent of the urban population had an average monthly per capita expenditure of Rs 7,651.68, about 10.9 times that of the bottom 10 per cent.

In urban areas of India, half of the population was living with monthly per capita expenditure below Rs 1,759. About 70 per cent of population had monthly per capita expenditure above Rs 1,295, and nearly 30 per cent had above Rs 2,464.

The provisional results of the National Sample Survey’s 68th round are based on the central sample consisting of 7,391 villages (59,070 sample households) in rural areas and 5,223 urban blocks (41,602 sample households) spread over almost all States and Union Territories in the country.

“These indicators are amongst the most important measures of the level of living of the respective domains of the population and are crucial inputs for estimation of prevalence of poverty by the Planning Commission,” the ministry of Statistics and Programme implementation said in a statement. IANS