Revamped Poverty Estimates

The new multidimensional poverty index (MPI) developed by the Niti Aayog shows that the poverty headcount for 2015–16 was 25.01% nationally. This is somewhere in between the earlier poverty numbers for 2011–12, which was estimated to be 21.9% using the Tendulkar Committee methodo­logy, and 29.5% as measured by the C Rangarajan Committee. According to the MPI, rural poverty headcount was 32.75% nationally, which was close to four times the urban poverty headcount of 8.81%. The 12 major contributors to poverty at the national level were the deprivation of 12 essential elements in varying degrees. These are nutrition (28.14%), years of schooling (15.14%), maternal health (10.4%), cooking fuel (9.34%), sanitation (8.61%), housing (8.31%), school attendance (7.39%), assets (3.58%), electricity (3.35%), drinking water (2.23%), bank account (2.17%), and child and adolescent mortality (1.33%).

Among the states, at the top end, were the seven states of Kerala, Goa, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and Mizoram where only less than a tenth of the population lived in poverty. It is to be noted that almost all these states, except for Tamil Nadu, are geographically and demographically relatively smaller states. On both the counts, fairly large states, particularly from the northern and north-eastern part of India, have ranked higher in terms of the poverty index, with particular regard to the rural sector.