Extreme Poverty In India Declined By 12.3 Percentage Points, Rural Areas Performed Better: World Bank

Urban poverty in the year 2016, when the government took the decision of demonetisation, rose by 2 percentage points.

A couple seen cooking food on a temporary arrangement outside a cluster slum in Ghaziabad (Getty Image)

New Delhi: Extreme poverty in India declined between 2011 and 2019, according to a working paper of the World Bank, reported news agency PTI. The decline during this period is 12.3 percentage points, with large improvement reported from rural areas compared to urban centers.

India has not released a new household consumption survey since 2011 and neither has it provided an official estimate of poverty and inequality in the country in last decade, reported PTI.

However,  a working paper of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released earlier had said that Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKAY)- pet project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was vital in keeping extreme poverty at the lowest level of 0.8 per cent during the pandemic year of 2020.

“We find that extreme poverty in India has declined by 12.3 percentage points between 2011 and 2019 but at a rate that is significantly lower than observed over the 2004-2011 period," the World Bank working paper revealed.

"Poverty reduction rates in rural areas are higher than in urban areas," the paper further informed. 

The authors,  economists Sutirtha Sinha Roy and Roy van der Weide in their research paper said that urban poverty in the year 2016, when the government took the decision of demonetisation, rose by 2 percentage points.

"Our estimates of poverty for recent periods are more conservative than earlier projections based on consumption growth in national accounts and other survey data," the paper said.

The paper also observed high income growth among farmers who have small land holdings. The growth is 10 per cent as compared to a 2 per cent growth for farmers with the largest landholdings, according to the paper.