Q.Collect data from 30 persons of your locality regarding their daily consumption of various commodities. Then rank the persons on the basis of relatively better off and worse off, to get the degree of relative poverty.

This is a field activity: survey 30 people about what they consume each day, then rank them to see relative poverty in your own locality.

What the activity teaches

It shows how relative poverty is judged — not by an absolute poverty line but by comparing people with one another — and how consumption data can be used as a proxy for well-being.

How to do it

1. Choose 30 people from your locality across different occupations and income levels.
2. For each person, record the daily consumption of key commodities — cereals (rice/wheat), pulses, milk, vegetables and fruit, cooking oil, sugar, and so on — in quantity or in money value.
3. Put the data in a table, one row per person.
4. Rank the 30 people from the relatively best-off to the relatively worst-off on the basis of their total consumption, so you can see the degree of relative poverty among them.