New Delhi, Aug. 26 -- What do Indians earn? If this has the air of a trick question, it is because no satisfactory answer exists. For the most part, we are clueless. Which explains why hope has been pinned on the Union statistics ministry's plan of an all-India household income survey, the first round of which might well be conducted next year.

What surveyed homes say they consume will no longer be all we have to estimate poverty by, and GDP per capita could be pushed back in the box of what exactly it tells us: national output per head. For businesses and investors focused on India as an emerging market, what people at large earn is not as relevant as the earnings of those in the upper zones of our vast pyramid.

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