The World Bank estimates that 496 million people moved out of poverty between 2011 and 2023.
Uttar Pradesh to West Bengal account for about 57 per cent of India’s poor.
Millions continue to face inadequate education, drinking water and sanitation, while wage inequality remains stark.
How poor is India? Officially, India has not attempted to answer this question since 2011. But since then, there have been debates over this question. And the debates mostly erupt when somebody somewhere makes an estimate of India’s poverty level.
Most of time, these debates are not over poverty in India but just polarised contests and counters on poverty data. Poverty in India has just become some figures conjured by some economists in absence of an official poverty estimate.
It has become a ritual to revisit India’s poverty levels whenever a global assessment of multidimensional poverty is released or the World Bank updates its global poverty estimates.
Sporadically, Indian economists occupying key positions in public institutions also issue their own estimates, albeit with the caveat that these are “personal assessments”. Strangely, India now appears to have embraced multidimensional poverty as its preferred measure and celebrates its rapid decline. The same celebratory mood grips the government whenever the World Bank updates its poverty data for the country.
The latest poverty debate erupted, as expected, when the World Bank recently released its “India Poverty and Equity Brief: October 2026”. The Bank’s assessment of India’s poverty levels is resoundingly impressive: “(India) … recording one of the fastest poverty declines in the world.” The numerical values of the Bank’s assessment are worth a historic cause of celebration.
“Between 2011 and 2023, the share of the population living below the Lower Middle-Income Country line ($4.20/day, 2021 Purchasing Power Parity) fell from 57.7 per cent to 16.1 per cent, lifting an estimated 496 million people out of poverty, while extreme poverty ($3.00/day) declined from 27.1 per cent to 2.6 per cent. Poverty is projected to continue declining, albeit more gradually, with the poverty rate at the $4.20/day line expected to fall from 14.2 per cent in 2026 to 12.1 per cent by 2028,” estimates the Bank.
Debates followed with the sides long known for their stands - a set of economists who support and the other just oppose. They evolved statistical alchemy to suit their own convictions. Ultimately, they withdraw to reappear when another estimate hits. Albeit, by another agency not the government of India. These figures don’t show the face of India’s poor. In fact, the great poverty debate in India is no more on poor but whether they exist anymore in the country.
Nevertheless, the World Bank’s brief offers some indication of where India’s poor are concentrated and the conditions in which they live even as the country records one of the world's fastest rates of poverty reduction. According to the Bank, poverty is becoming increasingly concentrated among households with lower levels of education, fewer assets, limited access to stable employment and higher dependency ratios.
The report also points to persistent and stark income inequality. “Wage disparities, however, remain pronounced, as median earnings among the top 10 per cent of workers were about 13 times those of the bottom 10 per cent in 2023,” it says.
On multidimensional poverty indicators, the Bank says that nearly 14 per cent of adult population didn’t complete primary education; 6.4 per cent of population didn’t have access to standard drinking water; and nearly 30 per cent population didn’t have access to sanitation though India is open-defecation free and sanitation is universal since years.
India’s geography of poverty, where poverty is getting concentrated, stretches “from Uttar Pradesh to West Bengal account for about 57 per cent of India’s poor population.” The Bank says, “As a result, further reductions in national poverty will increasingly depend on enabling productive employment in these states.” Notwithstanding the numerical jugglery of poverty estimate, the fact that such a level of income poverty and development deprivation exists is a call for action to target the mechanism that has enabled the “fastest rate of poverty decline in the world”.