Context: According to recent data from the World Poverty Clock, India has made significant progress in reducing extreme poverty. Less than 3% of India’s population now lives below the poverty line.

• This accomplishment is in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1.1 of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030.

Key Findings

• Extreme Poverty is now eliminated in India. 

• The World Poverty Clock updates: shows India’s extreme poverty at less than 3 % . 

• This could mean achieving significant milestones in the direction of the first of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), as prescribed by the United Nations with a timeline of 2030.

• The clock has taken $2.15 a day income to present the finding. 

• Accordingly, nearly 3.44 crore people are living in extreme population in 2024 against 4.69 crore in 2022. 

• As a share of total population, the number of people living in extreme poverty has come down to 2.4 %  from 3.3 %  in 2022. 

• This is the second big indication on the fight against poverty.

Indian reports on poverty

• A recent discussion paper by NITI Aayog, titled ‘Multidimensional Poverty in India since the year 2005-06,’ said that multidimensional poverty has declined sharply from 29.17 % in 2013-14 to 11.28 % in 2022-23, resulting in 24.82 crore individuals escaping multidimensional poverty during the 9-year period. 

• The paper focused on the prevalence of multidimensional poverty in India from 2005-06 to 2022-23, utilising both NFHS (National Family Health Surveys) data and projection methods for years when NFHS data was unavailable.

• Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) predicted for 2022-23 that less than 5 %  of Indians are expected to be below the poverty line, and extreme destitution has almost gone away.

Global reports on Poverty

• According to the World Bank, to aggregate and compare poverty rates across countries, poverty thresholds that reflect the same real standard of living in each country are used. 

• The $2.15 a day poverty line, which reflects the value of national poverty lines in some of the poorest countries, is often referred to as the extreme poverty line. 

• For added perspective, the World Bank also tracks poverty at $3.65 a day, the typical line for lower-middle-income countries, and $6.85 a day, typical for upper-middle-income countries.

• Poverty measured at the international poverty line of $2.15 a day is used to track progress toward meeting the World Bank target of reducing the share of people living in extreme poverty to less than 3 %  by 2030. 

• SDG target 1.1 is even more ambitious — by 2030, it wants all countries, regions, and groups within countries to achieve zero poverty at the same international poverty line.

World Poverty Clock

• It provides real-time poverty estimates through 2030 for nearly every country in the world. 

• It monitors progress against Ending Extreme Poverty, which is the UN’s first SDG. 

• The escape rate calculates the current rate of poverty reduction in the world. 

• Funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany. 

• It shows the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide, disaggregated by age, gender and rural/urban location. 

• Every second, some escape while others fall into poverty and the clocks count all of them.

Conclusion

• Hence, India’s achievement to eliminate extreme poverty is the byproduct of government steps towards the elimination of poverty through policies and schemes like the public distribution scheme, employment generation schemes, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, the Start-Up India and Stand Up India schemes, etc.