Some Indian states poorer than Africa's poorest
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Eight Indian states including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal together account for more poor people than the 26 poorest African nations combined, a new ‘multidimensional’ measure of global poverty has revealed
A new measure of global poverty has found that the eight Indian states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal together have 421 million ‘poor’ people, which is more than the 410 million poor in Africa’s 26 poorest countries.
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), developed and applied by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), with UNDP support, will feature in the forthcoming 20th anniversary edition of the UNDP Human Development Report due out late October.
MPI, which supplants the Human Poverty Index, assesses a range of critical factors or ‘deprivations’ at the household level: from education, potable water, sanitation and electricity to health outcomes and assets and services.
An analysis by MPI creators in fact reveals that half of the world’s poor live in South Asia (51%, or 84.4 crore), and one-quarter in Africa (28%, or 45.8 crore). Of 104 countries surveyed (5.2 billion people in all), 1.7 billion live in poverty. Niger has the greatest intensity and incidence of poverty, with 93% of its population classified as ‘poor’ in MPI terms.
“MPI is like a high-resolution lens which reveals a vivid spectrum of challenges facing the poorest households,” says OPHI Director Dr Sabina Alkire.
Source: Economic Times, July 13, 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk, July 2010