Q.The Tendulkar Committee's poverty line was based mainly on:

The Tendulkar Committee moved India's poverty line beyond pure calories to a broader expenditure basket that also covers essentials like health and education.

Recall which committee is associated with which methodology, in the order covered above.

Option-by-option analysis:

• (a) describes the ORIGINAL, earlier calorie-based approach (from the late-1970s Planning Commission task force), not the Tendulkar Committee's revision.
• (b) is correct: the Tendulkar Committee recommended a broader Monthly Per Capita Expenditure (MPCE)-based poverty line, combining a food component with an explicit allowance for non-food essentials such as health, education, clothing, and conveyance — moving away from a purely nutritional definition.
• (c) is incorrect — the poverty line is based on income/consumption expenditure, not a count of unemployed household members, though unemployment is a related cause of poverty (Section 6).
• (d) is incorrect — the Multidimensional Poverty Index is a separate, more recent measure of deprivation across health/education/living-standard indicators, distinct from the Tendulkar Committee's expenditure-based line.