Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2022 : What makes one poor in India?

India has 229 million multidimensional poor — the highest in the world. 90% of these live in rural areas and the rest in urban areas. So, what keeps one poor in India, especially in rural areas?

According to the latest *Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2022 poverty was mostly caused by lack of access to nutrition, housing, fuel and sanitation. A person who is poor can suffer multiple disadvantages at the same time, and their income alone doesn’t suffice as an indicator. 125 million suffer deprivations on
1. Housing,
2. Sanitation
3. Cooking fuel package

Each of these indicators is covered under a national programme in India. For example, Swach Bharat Mission led to India becoming open defecation free in 2019 according to official reports. Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) aimed to house every Indian in a pucca dwelling by 2022.

More than 60% of the poor are deprived of nutrition access. In MPI, under-performance on this indicator will lead to higher levels of multidimensional poverty. Two out of three poor families have at least one person deprived of nutrition.
Deprivations in nutrition contribute the most to MPI value — nearly as much as cooking fuel, housing and sanitation combined.
When deprivations in sanitation, cooking fuel and housing fell the most from 2015-16 to 2019-21 it led to significant progress in poverty reduction. But this data does not reflect the post-pandemic changes since 71% of the data for the country from the Demographic and Health Survey was obtained in 2019 before the pandemic and the rest in 2021.
Population deprived of sanitation dropped from 24.4 per cent in 2015/2016 to 11.3 per cent in 2019/2021.
Similarly, the population that cooked primarily with wood, dung, charcoal or another solid fuel shrunk by 50 per cent from 26.0 per cent in 2015-16 to 13.9 per cent in 2019-21.


*Released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and research center Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHDI)