UN praises 'remarkable' progress as 415 million Indians escape poverty

Its record in past 15 years shows rapid progress is attainable, says agency

A roadside vendor sells umbrellas to commuters in Amritsar. AFP

India has achieved a remarkable reduction in poverty, a UN agency said, with a 415 million people escaping it in 15 years.

The United Nations Development Programme on Tuesday released the latest global Multidimensional Poverty Index, with estimates for 110 countries, and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at the University of Oxford.

The MPI monitors both poverty reduction and tries to measure how people experience poverty in different aspects of their daily lives, for example, whether they have access to education, health, adequate housing and other basics.

"Notably, India saw a remarkable reduction in poverty," Tuesday's press release on the report said, pointing to the rapid economic growth in the time period.

The main indicators include nutrition and child mortality, years in schooling, availability of cooking fuel, drinking water, sanitation and electricity.

“The MPI as a poverty index can be pictured as a stacked tower of the interlinked deprivations experienced by poor individuals, with the aim of eliminating these deprivations,” the UN said in its report.

It found that 25 countries including India, which has a population of 1.4 billion, halved their global MPI values within 15 years, between 2006 to 2021, showing that rapid progress is attainable.

According to the report, there were about 645 million people in multidimensional poverty in India in 2005-6. The number has fallen to about 230 million between 2019 and 2021.

Children eat meals provided by the Akshaya Patra Foundation and the Indian government. Photo: Akshaya Patra Foundation

The report found that the proportion of poor families who lacked access to cooking fuel fell from 52.9 per cent to 13.9 per cent, while those deprived of sanitation fell from 50.4 per cent in 2005-6 to 11.3 per cent in 2019-21 in the country.

China also lifted 69 million people out of poverty between 2010 and 2014 and Indonesia succeeded in lifting 8 million people out of poverty between 2012 and 2017, the report said.

Other countries that made notable progress in poverty reduction included Cambodia, Congo, Honduras, Morocco, Serbia and Vietnam.

The report, however, also found that 1.1 billion out of 6.1 billion people across 110 countries – just over 18 per cent – live in acute multidimensional poverty.

“Sub-Saharan Africa, with 534 million, and South Asia, with 389 million, are home to approximately five out of every six poor people,” it said.