In its last report Oxford poverty and human development initiative India ranked 62 on the global MPI 2020 ranking among 106 countries. The MPI-2021 will be released in July – the same month the index is released each year. This article discusses the important facts about the global index in general and the key findings of the MPI for the UPSC IAS Exam. The ranking of India is based on data for a 2020 Global Index and the 2021 MPI is available in the coming months.
Human Poverty Index UPSC
Human Development Report 1997 introduces a human poverty index in an attempt to bring together in a composite index the different features of deprivation in the quality of life to arrive at an aggregate judgement on the extent of poverty in a community. The Report acknowledges that human poverty is larger than any particular measure, including the human poverty index. It includes many aspects like lack of life of a community and threats to sustainability and intergenerational equity etc. which cannot be measured. However, given the fact that the issues of poverty in the developing countries involve hunger, illiteracy, epidemics and the lack of health services or safe water, the human poverty index constructed by the Human Development Report focuses on the deprivation in the following three elements of human life longevity, knowledge, and a decent standard of living.
The first deprivation relates to survival – the vulnerability to death at a relatively early age and is represented in the human poverty index by the percentage of people expected to die before age 40.
The second dimension relates to knowledge – being excluded from the world of reading and communication – and is measured by the percentage of adults who are illiterate. The third aspect relates to a decent standard of living, in particular, overall economic provisioning. This is represented by a composite of two variables – the percentage of the population not using improved water resources, and the percentage of children under five who are underweight. The Human Development Report 2009 calculated HPI for 135 countries. India’s rank in terms of this index was as low as 88. In absolute terms, the HPI is as high as 28.0% indicating that human poverty is widespread.
Human Development Report 2010 introduced the concept of Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) to replace HPI. The MPI is the product of the multidimensional poverty headcount (the share of multidimensionally poor people) and the average number of deprivations each multidimensionally poor household experiences (the intensity of their poverty). It has three dimensions mirroring the HDI viz health, education and living standards which are reflected in 10 indicators. According to Human Development Report, 2010, “the MPI is most appropriate for less developed countries. It captures the widespread deprivation in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and the poorest Latin American countries. It reveals the magnitude of poverty beyond monetary measures – an important accomplishment”. According to this parameter, India with a poverty index of 0.296 per cent (national poverty line) is not favourably placed when compared with countries like China and Sri Lanka. The Human Development Report 2014 presents estimates of the multidimensional poverty index. The position of India is worrisome. This is clear from the fact that 55.3 per cent of the Indian’s population (i.e., more than 63.2 crore people) suffer from multidimensional poverty. As against this, in China, only 12.5 per cent of the population (i.e., 16.2 crore people) suffered from multidimensional poverty. Moreover, 27:8 per cent of the Indian’s population suffered from ‘severe poverty.
Class Base of the Poor
In an egalitarian society removal of poverty has to be accorded a high priority. But before any government decides its policy measures to solve the poverty problem, it must identify the poor. In India, unfortunately, no serious attempt has been made by the governments in this direction. Using the NSS data Minhas, Bardhan, Dandekar and Rath and a few others have attempted to identify the poor. According to their findings, a large bulk of the poor belongs to:
- Agricultural labour households without landholdings form about 60 per cent of all agricultural labour households. –
- Agricultural labour households with very small holdings constitute about 40 per cent of all agricultural labour households.
- Non-agricultural rural labour households without landholdings including village artisans progressively losing their traditional employment; and 109 Small land operators, with cultivating holdings of less than 2 hectares, and particularly less than 1 hectare.
Dandekar and Rath state
The urban poor is only an overflow of the rural poor, into the urban area. Fundamentally, they belong to the same class as the rural poor. However, as they live long enough in urban poverty, they acquire characteristics of their own. Little is known of their life and labour in the growing cities. Human Poverty: Some development economists have argued in recent years that although income focuses on an important dimension of poverty, it gives only a partial picture of the many ways human lives can be blighted. As noted by the Human Development Report 1997, Someone can enjoy good health and live but be illiterate and thus cut off from learning, from communication and interactions with others. Another person may be literate and quite well educated but prone to premature death because of epidemiological characteristics or physical disposition. Yet a third way is excluded from participating in the important decision-making processes affecting his/ her life. As is clear, the deprivation of none of these people can be fully captured by the level of their income. To get a complete idea of poverty, one has thus to enlarge the canvas of study and talk in terms of deprivations and not merely income as it is in the deprivation of the lives that people can lead that poverty manifests itself. Poverty is thus a denial of choices and opportunities for living a tolerable life. This is the concept of human poverty. It means that opportunities and choices most basic to human development are denied – to lead a long, healthy, creative life and to enjoy a decent. standard of living, freedom, dignity, self-respect and the respect of others.
Present Poverty Scenario
India lacks appropriate and reliable data for direct estimation of the extent of poverty, as no attempt has been made so far in this country to collect statistical information in respect of income distribution. However, the NSS data on consumption expenditure provide such information that can be used for determining the incidence of poverty both in urban and rural sectors. For the study of poverty in Indią economists have particularly relied on this data.
Here are the notes for Poverty eradication and the Five Year Plans.