This paper focuses mainly on the conceptual and measurement aspects of poverty and describes the methods of estimating the incidence of poverty in India. The sensitivity of movements in poverty to the methods used employing National Sample Survey data on consumer expenditure as available from different rounds at the all India level separately for the rural and urban sector has been presented for (a) judging the robustness in the pattern of poverty to the manner in which poverty is measured and (b) for drawing conclusion about progress in poverty alleviation. Trend in relative poverty employing different inequality measures has been presented. Lastly, efforts made on pilot basis for obtaining profile of the poor utilising National Sample Survey data on consumer expenditure and identification of poor families through below poverty line (BPL) census have been reported.