Friday, 17 May, 2024
By: Yash Gupte
According to the research, poverty in rural regions fell the fastest, from 32.59 percent to 19.28 percent, mainly because fewer people in states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Rajasthan qualified as multidimensionally poor. Image Source: IANS
India has registered a significant decline of 9.89 percentage points in the number of multidimensionally poor, from 24.85 percent in 2015-16 to 14.96 percent in 2019-2021.
According to the latest report released by NITI Aayog on poverty in India- ‘National Multidimensional Poverty Index: A Progress Review 2023,’ India has registered a significant decline of 9.89 percentage points in the number of multidimensionally poor, from 24.85 percent in 2015-16 to 14.96 percent in 2019-2021. The report was released by the government think tank on Monday, July 17. As per the report, around 13.5 crore people have made exit from the multidimensional poverty during from 2015-16 to 2019-21.
According to the research, poverty in rural regions fell the fastest, from 32.59 percent to 19.28 percent, mainly because fewer people in states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Rajasthan qualified as multidimensionally poor. Along with the Union Territories, Delhi, Kerala, Goa, and Tamil Nadu have the lowest rates of multidimensional poverty. Bihar, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh are at the top of the list of states with a high multidimensional poverty rate for the entire population.
Only seven states—Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Goa, and Kerala had fewer than 10 percent of their people living in multidimensional poverty in 2015–16 (NFHS–4), according to the research. However, by 2019–21 (NFHS–5), the number of states on the list had doubled to 14, with Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, and Uttarakhand being the seven new inclusions.
According to PTI, the National MPI measures simultaneous deprivations across three equally weighted dimensions of health, education, and standard of living that are represented by 12 SDG-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.
The Intensity of poverty, which measures the average deprivation among the people living in multidimensional poverty improved from about 47.14 percent in 2015-16 to 44.39 percent in 2019-21.
Source: National Multidimensional Poverty Index 2023
Bihar has the highest percentage of population living in multidimensional poverty but at the same time it cannot be ignored that there has been an improvement in the case of Bihar as the percentage of people who are multidimensionally poor dropped from 51.89 percent in 2015-16 to 33.76 percent in 2019-21. A similar was trend was witnessed in the case of Jharkhand. In the mineral rich state of Jharkhand, the percentage of population living in multidimensional poverty declined from 42.10 percent in 2015-16 during the 4th cycle of NFHS to 28.81 percent in 2019-21 (NFHS 5).
NFHS or the National Family Health Survey is a large-scale, multi-round survey conducted in a representative sample of households throughout India. The survey provides state and national information for India on: Fertility, Infant and child mortality, the practice of family planning, Maternal and child health, Reproductive health, Nutrition, Anaemia, Utilization and quality of health and family planning services. The International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) in Mumbai has been recognised by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) as the focal organisation for providing coordination and technical guidance for the survey.
Kerala has the lowest percentage of population living in multidimensional poverty in India, followed by Goa and Tamil Nadu.
According to the NITI Aayog report, in 2015–16, nearly 58 percent of Indians lacked access to clean cooking fuel; by 2019–2021, that number had dropped to 44 percent. Similarly, the percentage of people without banking facilities decreased from 9.66 percent to 3.69 percent, the percentage of people without access to electricity went from 12 percent to 3.27 percent, and the percentage of people without proper sanitary facilities decreased from 51.88 percent to 30.13 percent.
Source: National Multidimensional Poverty Index 2023
Three sub-indicators of the health category, including maternal health, child and adolescent mortality, and nutrition, showed a marginal improvement. Deprivation in maternal health improved from 22.5 percent to 19.17 percent, deprivation in nutrition dropped from 37 percent to 31 percent, and deprivation in child and adolescent mortality fell from 2.69 percent to 2.06 percent.
The chart illustrates how much work still has to be done to improve important factors like nutrition, maternal health, housing access, cooking fuel, and cleanliness. A big difference has been made by ambitious programmes like Swachch Bharat Abhiyan, Ujjwala Yojana, PM Awas Yojana, POSHAN, and Ayushman Bharat. The data does demonstrate that since 2015, there has been a significant improvement. However, some areas, including housing and sanitation, have advanced at a substantially slower rate than others, like bank accounts and access to energy. These continue to be the last unexplored areas where policymakers can actually raise living standards.
Talking about the government schemes, Under the PM Awas Yoajana, The Ministry of Rural Development has given the States/UTs a target of 2.94 crore houses instead of the 2.95 crore houses that were required to be built under PMAY-G. 2.85 Crore homes have been approved by the States/UTs for the beneficiaries of these, while the construction of 2.22 crore homes has already been finished as of March 24, 2023. In a major boost to affordable housing, the budget allocation for the PM Awaas Yojana was increased by 66 percent in the union budget presented on February 1, 2023. The Urban Infrastructure Development Fund (UIDF), which will be utilised to build urban infrastructure in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, was also unveiled by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. PMAY was allocated over Rs 79,000 crore this fiscal as compared to last year’s Rs 48,000 crore.
Coming over to the improvement in the number of bank account holders, PM Jan Dhan Yojana has played an important part. Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) is National Mission for Financial Inclusion to ensure access to financial services, namely, Banking/Savings & Deposit Accounts, Remittance, Credit, Insurance, and Pension in an affordable manner. As of 10th August 2022 number of total PMJDY Accounts are 46.25 crore. Out of the total account holders, 55.59 percent (25.71 crore) are women and 66.79 percent (30.89 crore) Jan Dhan accounts are in rural and semi-urban areas. PMJDY Accounts have grown around three-fold from 17.9 crore in August 15 to 46.25 crore as on 10th August 2022.
As per the guidelines of RBI, a PMJDY account is treated as inoperative if there are no customer induced transactions in the account for over a period of two years. In August2022, out of the total 46.25 crore PMJDY accounts, 37.57 crore (81.2 percent) are operative. One of the other effective steps taken by the government for the successful implementation of the PMJDY was the launching of Jan Dhan Darshak mobile app to provide a citizen centric platform for locating banking touch points such as bank branches, ATMs, Bank Mitras, Post Offices, etc. in the country.
More than a third of India's poor were pushed out of multidimensional poverty between 2005 and 2021, according to the statistics from the NITI Aayog report, which is consistent with the findings of the UNDP Global Multidimensional Poverty Index. With dedicated efforts taken by the state governments and the central government, more people can free themselves from the clutches of poverty.
