Poverty Estimates
There has been no uniform measure of poverty in India. The Planning Commission of India has accepted the Tendulkar Committee report which says that 37% of people in India live below the poverty line (BPL).
The Arjun Sengupta Report (from the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector), based on data between the period 1993-94 and 2004–05, states that 77% of Indians live on less than 20 a day (about $0.50 per day). The N.C. Saxena Committee report states, on account of calorific intake apart from nominal income, that 50% of Indians live below the poverty line.
A study by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative using a Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) found that there were 650 million people (53.7% of population) living in poverty in India, of which 340 million people (28.6% of the population) were living in severe poverty, and that a further 198 million people (16.4% of the population) were vulnerable to poverty. 421 million of the poor are concentrated in eight North Indian and East Indian states of Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. This number is higher than the 410 million poor living in the 26 poorest African nations. The states are listed below in increasing order of poverty based on the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index.
| MPI rank | States | Population (in millions) 2007 | MPI | Proportion of poor | Average intensity | Contribution to overall poverty | Number of MPI poor (in millions) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | India | 1,164.7 | 0.296 | 55.4% | 53.5% | - | 645.0 |
| 1 | Kerala | 35.0 | 0.065 | 15.9% | 40.9% | 0.6% | 5.6 |
| 2 | Goa | 1.6 | 0.094 | 21.7% | 43.4% | 0.0% | 0.4 |
| 3 | Punjab | 27.1 | 0.120 | 26.2% | 46.0% | 1.0% | 7.1 |
| 4 | Himachal Pradesh | 6.7 | 0.131 | 31.0% | 42.3% | 0.3% | 2.1 |
| 5 | Tamil Nadu | 68.0 | 0.141 | 32.4% | 43.6% | 2.6% | 22.0 |
| 6 | Uttarakhand | 9.6 | 0.189 | 40.3% | 46.9% | 0.5% | 3.9 |
| 7 | Maharashtra | 108.7 | 0.193 | 40.1% | 48.1% | 6.0% | 43.6 |
| 8 | Haryana | 24.1 | 0.199 | 41.6% | 47.9% | 1.3% | 10.0 |
| 9 | Gujarat | 57.3 | 0.205 | 41.5% | 49.2% | 3.4% | 23.8 |
| 10 | Jammu and Kashmir | 12.2 | 0.209 | 43.8% | 47.7% | 0.7% | 5.4 |
| 11 | Andhra Pradesh | 83.9 | 0.211 | 44.7% | 47.1% | 5.1% | 37.5 |
| 12 | Karnataka | 58.6 | 0.223 | 46.1% | 48.3% | 4.2% | 27.0 |
| 13 | Eastern Indian States | 44.2 | 0.303 | 57.6% | 52.5% | 4.0% | 25.5 |
| 14 | West Bengal | 89.5 | 0.317 | 58.3% | 54.3% | 8.5% | 52.2 |
| 15 | Orissa | 40.7 | 0.345 | 64.0% | 54.0% | 4.3% | 26.0 |
| 16 | Rajasthan | 65.4 | 0.351 | 64.2% | 54.7% | 7.0% | 41.9 |
| 17 | Uttar Pradesh | 192.6 | 0.386 | 69.9% | 55.2% | 21.3% | 134.7 |
| 18 | Chhattisgarh | 23.9 | 0.387 | 71.9% | 53.9% | 2.9% | 17.2 |
| 19 | Madhya Pradesh | 70.0 | 0.389 | 69.5% | 56.0% | 8.5% | 48.6 |
| 20 | Jharkhand | 30.5 | 0.463 | 77.0% | 60.2% | 4.2% | 23.5 |
| 21 | Bihar | 95.0 | 0.499 | 81.4% | 61.3% | 13.5% | 77.3 |
Estimates by NCAER (National Council of Applied Economic Research) show that 48% of the Indian households earn more than 90,000 (US$1,647.00) annually (or more than US$ 3 PPP per person). According to NCAER, in 2009, of the 222 million households in India, the absolutely poor households (annual incomes below 45,000) accounted for only 15.6% of them or about 35 million (about 200 million Indians). Another 80 million households are in income levels of 45,000– 90,000 per year. These numbers also are more or less in line with the latest World Bank estimates of the “below-the-poverty-line” households that may total about 100 million (or about 456 million individuals)
Read more about this topic: Poverty In India
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