Syllabus Section: Poverty (GS Paper III)

Importance: UPSC Prelims and UPSC Mains

Why in News?

• Recently, NITI Aayog, the government think tank, released the National Multidimensional Poverty Index (NMPI) baseline report.

• It defines poverty as the deprivation in crucial and basic parameters of health, education and living standards.

About NMPI:

• The report is based on the National Family Health Survey 4 (NFHS-4), which was conducted between 2015 and 2016.

• NFHS is conducted by the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.
• NFHS 4 (data period: 2015-16), precedes the full roll out of flagship schemes on housing, drinking water, sanitation, electricity, cooking fuel, financial inclusion, and other major efforts towards improving school attendance, nutrition, mother and child health, etc. Hence it serves as a useful source for measuring the situation at baseline i.e. before large-scale rollout of nationally important schemes.

• It is developed by the NITI Aayog in consultation with 12 ministries and in partnership with state governments and the index publishing agencies, namely, Oxford University’s Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
• The multidimensional poverty index is calculated using 12 indicators -- nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, antenatal care, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets and bank account -- that have been grouped under three dimensions namely, health, education and standard of living.

 

Key Findings:

Highest Poverty Levels

• As per the index, 51.91% of the population in Bihar is poor, followed by Jharkhand (42.16%), Uttar Pradesh (37.79%), Madhya Pradesh (36.65%) and Meghalaya (32.67%).

Lowest Poverty Levels

• Kerala registered the lowest poverty levels (0.71%), followed by Puducherry (1.72%), Lakshadweep (1.82%), Goa (3.76%) and Sikkim (3.82%)

Less than 10% of the population is Poor:

Other States and Union Territories where less than 10% of the population is poor include Tamil Nadu (4.89%), Andaman & Nicobar Islands (4.30%), Delhi (4.79%), Punjab (5.59%), Himachal Pradesh (7.62%) and Mizoram (9.8%)

Significance of National Multidimensional Poverty Index (NMPI)

• It is an important contribution towards instituting a public policy tool which monitors multidimensional poverty,
• It informs evidence based and focused interventions, thereby ensuring that no one is left behind,” NITI Aayog

Source: The Hindu