For some time now, data available periodically from the National Sample Survey (NSS) have figured significantly in policy-related discussions on the effects of the economic strategies of the 1990s on the incidence of poverty, especially rural poverty. Throughout the 1990s, the NSS results on household consumption expenditure generated much interest in both academic and policy circles[2] . These results, which many independent researchers have analysed, had led to a general consensus that rural poverty at the all-India level did not show any declining trend over the 1990s (see Table 1)[3] . That this had happened despite the somewhat higher rates of aggregate GDP growth during the period became an important issue in the ongoing policy debate on the effects of the liberalising economic policies instituted by successive governments over the 1990s.