Nearly 250 million people escaped multidimensional poverty in nine years of the BJP-led NDA government between 2013-14 and 2022-23 with Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan registering the highest decline in poverty, shows a discussion paper, jointly done by NITI Aayog and UNDP.
The 248.2 million people who escaped multidimensional poverty in nine years l translates into 27.5 million people escaping multidimensional poverty every year, NITI Aayog member Ramesh Chand said.
According to the paper, multidimensional poverty in India has come down from 29.17% in 2013-14 to 11.28% in 2022-23, helping India achieve the sustainable development goal 1.2, which mandates countries to reduce poverty by half by 2030, much before the target.
The paper clarifies that due to lack of data for years between 2005-06 and 2015-16 and after 2019-21 concerning the incidence of poverty levels, headcount poverty ratios for 2013-14 and 2022-23 have been estimated on compound growth rate of the reduction in the incidence of poverty levels between 2005-06 and 2015-16 and 2015-16 and 2019-20.
“Government has a goal to bring down multidimensional poverty to below 1% and all efforts are being made in that direction,” NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam said.
According to the paper, the rate of decline in multi-dimensional poverty has accelerated during the period 2013-14 to 2002-23 on the back of a large number of initiatives and schemes of the government targeted at improving specific deprivation aspects.
The paper said Uttar Pradesh saw the highest reduction with 59.4 million escaping poverty in this period followed Bihar (37.7 million), Madhya Pradesh (23 million) and Rajasthan (18.7 million).
The UNDP had in its global MPI report released last year said 415 million people exited multidimensional poverty in India in 15 years, from 2005-06 to 2019-21 with the incidence of poverty falling from 55.1% in 2005-06 to 16.4% in 2019-21.
Following this, NITI Aayog said 135 million Indians moved out of multidimensional poverty in five years between 2015-16 and 2019-21 with the proportion of poor in the country down from 24.8% to 14.9% between 2015-16 and 2019-21, on the back of improvements in nutrition, years of schooling, sanitation and subsidized cooking fuel.
The National Multi-dimensional Poverty Index, developed in 2021, measures simultaneous deprivations across the three equally weighted dimensions of health, education, and standard of living that are represented by 12 Sustainable Development Goals-aligned indicators.
These include nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, maternal health, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets, and bank accounts.
