This contribution aims to examine the problems inherent in the dominant money-metric approach to poverty measurement, as a deliberate attempt to distorting and downsizing the level of human deprivation and the subsequent neo-liberal policy prescriptions of targeting. Then, under the livelihoodsapproach, it broadens the definition of poverty by including vulnerability andidentifies the Common People of Nepal and their socio-economic profiles asan alternative analysis of human deprivation. In today’s complex society virtually everyone is prone to various socio-economic shocks which under-mines livelihoods and raises vulnerability to further collapse of livelihoods, and thus aggravates poverty. This situation is most serious to the Common People,defined as a combination of the conventionally defined poor and the vulner-able who do not possess sufficient livelihood capitals. Hence, coupled with its computational problems, the intention and utilization of poverty line appearsto be quite controversial and largely a meaningless exercise