Exploring the Dimensions of Poverty in India

Poverty in India is far more complex than a low-income statistic. It is a layered reality shaped by where you live, which social group you belong to, and whether you have access to education, healthcare, and basic opportunities. India’s National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), developed by NITI Aayog in collaboration with UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), captures this complexity by measuring deprivation across health, education, and standard of living – not just income. Understanding poverty through these multiple dimensions is essential for designing policies that actually reach those who need them most.

What does “multidimensional poverty” mean? 🔗

The traditional way of measuring poverty focuses on whether a person’s income falls below a set threshold. But this approach misses a great deal. A family might earn just enough to cross the official poverty line yet still lack clean drinking water, schooling for their children, or access to a doctor. India’s National MPI measures 12 indicators spanning nutrition, child mortality, maternal health, years of schooling, school attendance, housing, sanitation, cooking fuel, electricity, drinking water, assets, and bank access. This broader lens reveals a much richer picture of who is poor and how they are poor.

According to the NITI Aayog’s 2023 MPI Progress Review, about 14.96% of India’s population was multidimensionally poor as of 2019-21, down from 24.85% in 2015-16 – meaning roughly 135 million people moved out of multidimensional poverty in just five years. That is real progress. But the aggregate number masks enormous variation across regions and social groups.

The regional dimension: a country of stark contrasts 🔗

India’s poverty is not evenly spread. It clusters heavily in certain states and almost disappears in others. This geographic pattern reflects decades of difference in governance quality, investment climate, agricultural productivity, infrastructure, and access to public services.

High-poverty states 🔗

Research on regional multidimensional poverty consistently identifies Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh as the states with the greatest concentrations of deprivation. Bihar’s multidimensional poverty rate stands at 33.8%, and Uttar Pradesh’s at 22.9% – both far above the national average. These states share common structural challenges: heavy dependence on low-productivity agriculture, limited industrialization, infrastructure deficits, and weaker systems for public service delivery.

Six states – Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and West Bengal – together account for 58% of India’s multidimensionally poor population, despite having only 45% of the total population. This concentration means that targeted, state-specific interventions matter enormously.

The rural-urban divide 🔗

Within states, rural areas consistently record higher poverty rates than urban areas, though urban poverty – visible in overcrowded slums and the informal economy – is far from negligible. The rural-urban divide in India has been widening after economic reforms, with a slowdown in agricultural growth being a particular concern for both employment generation and poverty reduction. Poverty in remote and mountainous regions presents yet another layer: geographical factors such as topography, elevation, and lack of infrastructure limit economic opportunities in ways that standard MPI indicators do not fully capture.

The social dimension: caste, gender, and religion 🔗

Where someone lives is only part of the story. Poverty in India is also profoundly shaped by social identity – particularly caste, gender, and religion. These social fault lines create barriers to education, employment, and upward mobility that persist even as the overall economy grows.

Caste and tribal identity 🔗

Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Scheduled Castes (SCs) bear a disproportionate burden of poverty in India. A caste-based analysis of multidimensional poverty found that 44.4% of STs and 29.2% of SCs are multidimensionally poor, compared to just 14.9% among the socially privileged groups. According to the UNDP’s Global MPI 2021, five out of six multidimensionally poor people in India live in households headed by someone from a Scheduled Tribe, Scheduled Caste, or Other Backward Class. About 65 million tribal people – half of India’s ST population – live in multidimensional poverty.

The World Bank’s report on poverty and social exclusion in India notes that despite an expansion in education among Dalit men, historical exclusion from land ownership and skilled employment continues to hold SC communities back. Most Dalits do not own land, which locks them out of farm-based self-employment. Wage differentials between Dalit and non-Dalit workers remain a persistent marker of continued labour market disadvantage.

Gender and the feminization of poverty 🔗

Gender cuts across all dimensions of poverty in India. Women, particularly from marginalized communities, face what researchers describe as a triple burden – economic deprivation, patriarchy, and caste-based discrimination. Dalit women score worse than both Dalit men and non-Dalit women on virtually every human development indicator, including literacy and longevity. They are also at heightened risk of wage discrimination and social violence.

The labour market reflects this inequality directly. Women’s nominal wages in regular salaried work were, on average, 71% of men’s wages, and in casual work, just 56%. Over-reliance on casual and agricultural labour makes women especially vulnerable to poverty cycles tied to seasonal employment fluctuations. Religious minority status adds another layer of disadvantage: research confirms that people belonging to lower castes as well as Muslims face higher poverty and inequality than the rest of the population.

The human development dimension: education, health, and capability 🔗

Amartya Sen’s capability approach fundamentally reframed how development scholars think about poverty – not as a lack of income, but as a lack of freedom to live a life one has reason to value. Education and health are not just outcomes of poverty reduction; they are the very pathways through which poverty is reduced across generations.

Education deprivation 🔗

Literacy gaps, high dropout rates, inadequate school infrastructure, and teacher absenteeism remain serious concerns in India’s poorer states and communities. Educational outcomes for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes remain unsatisfactory despite reservation policies, with these groups concentrated in low-paid, insecure employment. The link is direct: poor educational quality in early years translates into limited economic mobility in adulthood, perpetuating intergenerational poverty cycles.

Healthcare access and deprivation 🔗

The health dimension alone accounts for 36% of total multidimensional deprivation in India, making it the single largest contributor to poverty as measured by MPI. Malnutrition, high infant and maternal mortality, and inadequate access to primary healthcare remain acute in tribal and rural areas. ST children constitute 12% of all rural children under five but account for nearly 23% of deaths in the 1-4 age group – a stark illustration of how social marginalization translates directly into preventable health loss.

Kerala: a model of human-centred development 🔗

Against this backdrop, Kerala stands out as one of the most compelling development success stories within India. The Kerala model is characterized by high literacy rates, high life expectancy, low infant mortality, and improved access to healthcare – all achieved despite a relatively modest per capita income. In 2022, Kerala topped the Human Development Index among India’s major states with a score of 0.758.

Most strikingly, on November 1, 2025, Kerala declared itself free of extreme poverty – becoming the first Indian state to achieve this milestone. According to NITI Aayog’s 2023 MPI, Kerala had the lowest multidimensional poverty rate in India at 0.55%, compared to the national average of 14.96%.

What made Kerala different? 🔗

Kerala’s success was not accidental. Academic literature identifies three primary factors: decentralisation of governance, political mobilisation of the poor, and active involvement of civil society organisations in planning and implementing development policies. The state’s approach challenged the orthodox assumption that high GDP growth must come first and social investment later.

Land reforms in the 1970s redistributed agricultural land, weakening feudal structures that had kept poor communities trapped. Kerala launched an immunization program for infants and pregnant women nearly a decade before India’s national immunization program, reflecting early state commitment to public health. The Kudumbashree Mission, a women-centric poverty alleviation program, empowered millions of women through self-help groups and micro-enterprises, making gender inclusion central to development rather than an afterthought.

Kerala’s decentralisation drive since the mid-1990s – its “People’s Planning” campaign – is widely considered the most extensive and efficient in India, empowering local governments with real resources and accountability. The result was targeted, context-specific interventions rather than top-down programs. The state’s Extreme Poverty Eradication Programme (EPEP), launched in 2021, identified 64,006 extremely poor families and designed customised micro-plans for each household, addressing specific deprivations in food, healthcare, housing, and livelihood.

Limitations of the Kerala model 🔗

Kerala’s success is real, but its replicability has limits. The state’s relatively small, socially cohesive population, historical advantages in pre-independence literacy, and decades of social activism created conditions that cannot be instantly replicated elsewhere. Kerala’s unemployment rate remains a concern, and income inequality – as measured by the Gini coefficient – has actually grown, raising questions about whether welfare gains have been matched by economic opportunity. Even so, NITI Aayog attributes Kerala’s poverty reduction success to land reforms, universal education, accessible healthcare, decentralisation, and strong public distribution systems – factors that are, in principle, replicable with political will.

The path forward: beyond income, toward inclusion 🔗

India’s poverty reduction record over the past three decades is genuinely impressive. According to the World Bank’s Spring 2025 Poverty and Equity Brief, approximately 171 million people in India moved out of extreme poverty between 2011 and 2023, with the extreme poverty rate falling from 16.2% to 2.3%. Yet the regional and social gaps documented above show that growth alone does not automatically reach those most marginalised by caste, gender, geography, and historical exclusion.

Addressing India’s poverty in all its dimensions requires interventions that are simultaneously economic and social – land rights, quality schooling, accessible healthcare, women’s empowerment, and accountable local governance. Empowerment of the poor – giving them a meaningful role in governance and development decisions – is increasingly recognised as a critical factor in sustaining poverty reduction rather than just delivering welfare payments. Kerala’s journey from 59.8% poverty in the 1970s to near-zero today is proof that this combination can work.

What do you think? Given how deeply poverty in India is shaped by caste and regional inequality, should poverty reduction policy prioritise targeted social group interventions over broad economic growth strategies? And can the Kerala model – built on decades of social reform, land redistribution, and decentralised governance – realistically serve as a template for states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which face far more complex structural challenges?

References

1. https://www.undp.org/india/national-multidimensional-poverty-index-progress-review-2023
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