New Delhi, June 24 -- For years, India's poverty debate has been stuck in familiar grooves: contests over the methodology for updation of poverty lines and extrapolations from outdated surveys. After 2011-12, the country had no official consumption survey to anchor our public debate. The release of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2023-24 finally broke that stalemate.

When 2011-12 monthly per capita consumption expenditure (MPCE) thresholds are brought to 2023-24 prices, the real consumption level that once defined India's bottom 10% now applies to less than 0.5% of the population. This is important, for it tells us that the base level of our consumption pyramid has significantly risen.

The bottom tail has vanished: L...