About 25 cr Indians pulled out of poverty in nine years: NITI Aayog
India achieved a prominent decline in multidimensional poverty index since 2013-14. While the index stood at 29.17% in 2013-14 it declined to 11.28% in 2022-23, which signalled a sharp reduction of 17.89 percentage points.
As many as 25 crore people – or, equivalent to 75% of the total population of the US – were pulled out of poverty in the past nine years in India, marking a small but determined step towards a developed nation status. The data was revealed in a discussion paper by the Centre’s think tank NITI Aayog on January 15.
The data was mentioned in a paper titled “Multidimensional Poverty in India since 2005-06”. According to the discussion paper, India achieved a prominent decline in multidimensional poverty index since 2013-14. While the index stood at 29.17% in 2013-14 it declined to 11.28% in 2022-23, which signalled a sharp reduction of 17.89 percentage points.
While there are many measures of poverty, many of them in monetary terms, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is a universally recognised comprehensive measure that captures poverty in many dimensions beyond monetary aspects. It was compiled jointly by the UN Development Programme and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative.
MPI’s global methodology is based on the robust “Alkire and Foster (AF)” method that identifies people as poor based on universally acknowledged metrics designed to assess acute poverty, providing a complementary perspective to conventional monetary poverty measures.
The country’s efforts in tackling poverty were lauded earlier too. In mid-October 2022, the UN said that India achieved “historical change” by dragging out 41.5 crore people from poverty in the 15-year-period between 2005-06 and 2019-21. The UNDP said that the incidence of poverty in India came down from 55.1% in 2005-06 to 16.4% in 2019-21.
“India is an important case study for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG),” UNDP said in a statement. It emphasised that the Indian experience demonstrated that it was possible to reduce poverty by half across age groups and gender by on a large scale was possible by the year 2030.
Incidentally, the SDGs comprise a collection of 17 goals adopted by the UN in 2015 with a broad-based target of ending poverty, protecting the earth, and ensuring peace and prosperity for mankind by 2030.
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