Poverty has been ever-present in India since Independence, but recent  policy stands to change the status quo. Multiple undertakings and  initiatives have raised the standard of living for those below the  poverty line, but narratives continue to emerge that India's poor are  getting poorer.   A paper, written by Arvind Virmani, Surjit Bhalla, and Karan Bhasin,  aims to find the poverty and distributional consequences of the  government's pandemic support measures. The main argument of the paper  is that extreme poverty was kept low in India despite the pandemic. It  presents estimates of poverty and consumption inequality in India from  2004-05 to 2020-21.   Surjit Bhalla is an Indian economist, author and columnist, who is  currently the Executive Director for India at the International Monetary  Fund. He was also the part-time Member of the Economic Advisory Council  to the Prime Minister. Karan Bhasin is a New York-based researcher with  interests in Macroeconomics, Indian Economy, Institutional Economics  and Political Economy. He has also appeared on multiple Bharatvaarta  episodes speaking about his papers and findings in the economic field.  In this episode, they speak about their paper, findings, methodologies  and of the state of poverty in India.