April Budget Challenge – Rs1429

Experiment

Last week I read this article in The Times of India dated  July 7, 2014 which mentioned the following:

Those spending over Rs 32 a day in rural areas and Rs 47 in towns and cities should not be considered poor…”

Not quite realising what I was reading I finished the article. But what I just read stayed in the back of my mind. Somewhere around lunch I got out my calculator and converted the amount back to Euro’s. It helps me to value the amount of money – I’m still not fully used to deal with Rupees and convert back and forth on a daily basis.

Anyway, with the current rate (Rs 70 = 1 Euro) this came to 67 euro-cent.

My brain just stopped working for a moment…

A litre of milk costs Rs 39. The biscuits I munch away everyday with my cup of chai are Rs 10. I had no clue and had to check for the price on the pack. Now I have the closet open and I start checking the prices of everything in there.

Not to bore you with the numbers, but the some of the fractions is more than Rs 47 – much more.

But we are two. Pfff, what a relieve. Maybe it is not that bad yet, Rs 47 x 2 = Rs 94 a day. Which makes a total of Rs 1429 for the whole month. I got curious how much our monthly expenses are.

“Deepak, how much is our electricity bill per month?”

“Why do you want to know”

“Just curious.”

“About Rs 1000 a month. It depends.”

“Hmm, ok. And water?”

“Water is a fixed fee”

Such a relief, at least we are not paying per litre of water. Something started scratching me in the back of my mind. How can someone survive on only Rs 47 a day? Or in our case Rs 94. To me it seems impossible, but not according to the Rangarajan committee – so who are we to contest this. Let’s give it a try.

Deepak and I decided we will try to reduce our expenses as much as is realistically possible for the month of April and see if we can stay within the budget given by the Rangarajan committee. We do have to make some sacrifices – but hey – all for the bigger goal.

To be continued…

 

Comments

3 responses to “April Budget Challenge – Rs1429”

  1. Cyn Avatar

    That whole poverty line thing is angering. These politians have no idea what they are talking about.

    47 rupees in a city doesn’t take you anywhere. A 500ml pouch of milk cost 24 rupees alone. A kg of rice is at around 70-90 rupees depending the variety these days. You can’t even buy a bunch of banana with that money. A handful of sad little vegetables maybe. And there are regular scams in cities where vegetables supplier inflate the price of staples at random. A while ago we were paying 80 rupees a kg of onions when the normal seasonal price was 15-20 but nobody sold them at this price.

    With that kind of arbitrary poverty level crap you can’t blame people for not sending their kids to school and sending them to work instead. The Governement doesn’t seem to realise that sadly 🙁

    1. Sarah Vasterling Avatar
      Sarah Vasterling

      I’m afraid that what you’re saying is completely true. The last few days I was doing the accounting for April and no matter how I crunch the numbers it just does not add up. Let’s see at the end of April, I might be surprised and within budget.

  2. Drumles Den Haag Avatar

    Sound impossible to live of this kind of money. Maybe you can live of it with only food and water, but what if you need some medical attention. There’s no budget for that.

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