Poorest state in India 2021 list, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand are the poorest states in India, according to Niti Aayog’s latest Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) survey. According to the measure, 51.91 percent of Bihar’s population is impoverished, with 42.16 percent in Jharkhand and 37.79 percent in Uttar Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh is ranked fourth on the index (36.65 percent), while Meghalaya is ranked fifth (32.67 percent).
Kerala (0.71%), Goa (3.76%), Sikkim (3.82%), Tamil Nadu (4.89%), and Punjab (5.59%) have the lowest poverty rates in India and are ranked at the base of the index. Dadra and Nagar Haveli (27.36 percent), Jammu & Kashmir (12.58 percent), Daman & Diu (6.82 percent), and Chandigarh (5.97 percent) were the poorest Union Territories (UTs). Puducherry, which has 1.72 percent of its population classified as poor, has done better than Lakshadweep (1.82 percent), the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (4.30 percent), and Delhi (4.79 percent).
Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh have the largest number of malnourished people, led by Bihar. Bihar also ranks last in terms of the percentage of the population without access to maternity health, years of schooling, school attendance, and the proportion of the population without access to fuel for cooking and power.
In terms of child and adolescent death, Uttar Pradesh came in first, led by Bihar & Madhya Pradesh, whereas Jharkhand came in last, led by Bihar and Odisha. In terms of the proportion of the population without sanitation, Jharkhand came in last, led by Bihar and Odisha.
As per the report, India’s national MPI measure is based on the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) widely recognized and proven methodology (UNDP). It’s also important to note that as a measure of poverty incidence, it represents various and concurrent deprivation encountered by households, according to the report.
This collection of processes of India’s first national MPI measurement is known as the National Family Health Survey’s reference period of 2015-16, according to Kumar (NFHS). He explained that the national MPI is made up of 12 essential components that encompass issues including health and nutrition, education, and standard of living.
According to the paper, the national MPI, an aggregated measure that defines poverty in simplistic words as a lack of basic health, education, and living standards, is a substantial change from how poverty has indeed been defined and conceived previously.
“Whereas this report is an important first step toward popularising MPI, it is based on a five-year-old dataset. The recent success of several development programs has resulted in improvements in crucial indices such as health, education, and living standards “It was also added.