The official source of information on poverty in India is the consumer expenditure survey undertaken by the National Sample Survey (NSS) organization. It has conducted such surveys for almost fifty years. Though annual surveys have been conducted in recent years, most analysis and debate has centered on the large survey, incorporating more than 100,000 households, which the NSS undertakes every five years. Since 1983, two such surveys have been conducted: the consumer expenditure survey (CES) and the Employment and Unemployment (E&U) survey. These have been conducted simultaneously, covering the same set of households for the survey years 1983, 1987-88, 1993-1994, 1 but different households for the year 1999-2000. This paper is about the inferences one can make about the magnitude of and trends in poverty in India, on the basis of unit records made available by these eight household surveys since 1983