A case for bringing the issue of poverty to the centre stage of public policy has recently been made by two of India’s prominent economists. In their article, "How the data sets stack up" (The Hindu, Editoral page, April 4), C. Rangarajan and S. Mahendra Dev sugge3st that since the publication of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century global attention may have got somewhat disproportionately focused on the issue of inequality, crowding out attention to poverty. They argue that poverty is an important indicator of a country's development on its own. Levelling up This is an important intervention to have made, for we can see from the histories of different parts of the world that the relationship between the movements in poverty and inequality is not unique. In particular, we find from the Indian experience that there are instances in which a public policy for focused on the reduction of inequality may not result in the elimination may not result in the elimination of poverty. Essentially, inequality can be reduced by Taxing the rich, a form of 'levelling down', but poverty can be permanently eliminated only by raising the incomes of the poor, a form of ‘levelling up’. Not only has public policy in India paid far too little attention to the latter but also some of the measures adopted to tackle in equality may have exacerbated poverty here. The long-term stratergy should be to tackle these tow jointly through the equalisation of capabilities. However, in the short-term, public policy must address livelihood opportunities for the poor, the exact implication of which for inequality is not always obvious. The experience of poverty for an individual is not necessarlily the same as that of inequality, and poverty reduction often requires particular attention. The article by Professors Rangarajan and Dev serves to remind us of this. The scale of poverty in Inida remains massive.