When someone says India, most often for certain people the words like third-world country, poverty, slums, overpopulation and of course tech or call centres specifically come to mind. These and of course, there are also other terms like yoga, exotic, colours and all that not just the western but many other Asian countries also know India by.
The slums and poverty are especially a very big trademark of India, to the point that there is whole slum tourism being carried out in the country, where the money made is in some cases used by NGOs to help those slums themselves.
However, a recent index released by the United Nations (UN) has kind of shown that perhaps that might be changing. UN has reportedly called it a historic change.
What Is This Historic Change?
The UN’s United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford recently came out with the new Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). As per this index, in India “415 million people exited poverty between 2005/06 and 2019/21”.
According to the Index, “Sustainable Development Goal target 1.2 of reducing at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions by 2030 is possible to achieve” even at a much larger scale than thought.
The press release by the UN for this report claimed that “in India, some 415 million people left multidimensional poverty in a 15-year period — a historic change”.
It further added that “India is an important case study for the Sustainable Development Goals, the first of which is to end poverty in all its forms and to reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions by 2030, all while leaving no one behind.”
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However, while this might be a big thing in itself, that does not mean that India’s ranking in poverty is any good, with the country still having the most number of poor people worldwide, a whopping 228.9 million as per the report with Nigeria being above it with 97.7 million.
The analysis of the report was built from the 2020 population data of the country and said “Despite progress, India’s population remains vulnerable to the mounting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and to rising food and energy prices. Integrated policies tackling the ongoing nutritional and energy crises should be a priority.”
It also said that “Despite tremendous gains, the ongoing task of ending poverty for the 228.9 million poor people in 2019/2021 is daunting — especially as the number has nearly certainly risen since the data were collected.
There were still 97 million poor children in India in 2019/21 — more than the total number of poor people, children and adults combined, in any other country covered by the global MPI. Yet, these multipronged policy approaches show that integrated interventions can improve the lives of millions of people.”
The index also claimed that “poorest states and groups in India (children, lower castes and those living in rural areas)” saw the fastest reduction in poverty.
However, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on India’s poor was not included since around 71% of the data for the Demographic and Health Survey (2019-21) was collected before the pandemic hit the country.
Image Credits: Google Images
Feature Image designed by Saudamini Seth
Sources: India Today, The Indian Express, The Economic Times
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This post is tagged under: India poor people, india, india poverty, covid 19, united nations, united nations development programme, poverty, Sustainable Development Goals, india population, india population rich, india population poor, india rich poor, Sustainable Development, Sustainable Development india, Multidimensional Poverty Index, Multidimensional Poverty Index UN
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