There are more poor in eight Indian states tahn there are in 26 African countries, according to a report brought out by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Oxford university.

The study says that there are more poor people as per Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) in eight Indian states - a total of around 421 million in the states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal than in the 26 poorest African countries combined (410 million).

The study mentioned that the population of the poorest state Bihar with 95 million people exceeds the total of nine of the ten poorest African countries.

The study reported that the Scheduled Tribes (ST) have the highest MPI (0.482), almost the same as Mozambique and the Scheduled Castes (SC) have a headcount of 66 percent and their MPI is a bit better than Nigeria. “58 percent of other Backward Castes are MPI poor,” the report added.  

However the report mentioned that the states like Delhi, Kerala, Goa, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh have least number of poor people in India. Other ‘top ten’ states with the least number of poor in India are Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Haryana and Gujarat.

The study analysed that South Asia and Africa are two places where poverty are widespread as half of the world’s poor live in South Asia (51 percent or 844 million people) and one quarter in Africa (28 percent or 458 million).

The MPI has taken into account a range of factors or “deprivations” at the household level: from education to health outcomes to assets and services to calculate the number of poor people around the world. The multidimensional approach to assessing poverty has been adapted in Mexico. Now Chile and Colombia are also trying to use the same figure to calculate the number of poor people.

The new index will come in the forthcoming edition of the UNDP Human Development Report in October this year and will the Human Poverty Index, which had been included in these reports since 1997.

Read the report