Odisha Among 9 Poorest States In India, Says Global MPI Report

Bhubaneswar: Odisha has been ranked among the nine poorest states in the country by the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2022 report released by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).

As per the report released by Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and UNDP, of the 10 poorest states in 2015-16, except West Bengal, the rest nine – Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Rajasthan remained the poorest in 2019-21.

Bihar, the poorest state in 2015-16, saw the fastest reduction in MPI value in absolute terms. The percentage of poor in Bihar fell from 77.4 % in 2005-06 to 52.4 % in 2015-16 and further to 34.7 % in 2019-21.

India has by far the largest number of poor people worldwide at 22.8 crore, followed by Nigeria at 9.6 crore. Two-thirds of these people live in a household in which at least one person is deprived of nutrition

Despite several of the government’s schemes such as the PM Ujjwala Yojana (for LPG connections), PM Awas Yojana (for affordable housing), Poshan Abhiyaan (for holistic nourishment), and Swachh Bharat Mission (sanitation), the report found that, among poor people, the most common deprivations were in cooking fuel, housing, nutrition, and sanitation.

The report also found that India is the only country in South Asia where poverty is significantly more prevalent among female-headed households than among male-headed households.

Poverty among children fell faster in absolute terms, although India still has the highest number of poor children in the world. More than one in five children in India are poor compared with around one in seven adults.

Global MPI is prepared by comparing the development in several sectors and parameters that are inter-linked in the past five years.

Notably, the report does not fully assess the effects of the COVID pandemic on poverty in India as 71% of the data from the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-2021) relied upon for MPI were collected before the pandemic.