In the copious discussion recently on the data base for poverty measurement in India, doubts have been raised whether the household expenditure survey data generated by the 50-year old National Sample Survey system currently being used for poverty measurement fully reflects the growth in consumer expenditure and captures the extent of change in the poverty ratio. And when the results of the quinquennial survey for 1999-2000 were released, the change in its survey design threw up yet another controversy about the validity of its results. These two issues have been discussed at length and we shall outline briefly the salient aspects of the discussion and move on to the more substantive question whether conditions of rapid growth and decline in poverty obtained in the 1990s.