In India, 5 out of 6 multidimensionally poor are from lower tribes or castes: UN report

What is the news? 

The UN report: Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021 highlights yet another divide in the Indian society as 5 out of 6 multidimensionally poor are from lower tribes or castes. 

What is the key focus of the Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021?

The report provides estimates on multidimensional poverty for 109 developing countries.

Present multidimensional poverty estimates disaggregated by ethnicity and caste for 41 countries to identify who is – and how people are – being left behind. 

The intrahousehold analysis of poverty with a gender focus. 

It revealed how multidimensional poverty could amplify the impacts of COVID-19 shocks, hurting education, employment and livelihood. 

What are the key findings of the Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021? 

Key findings at the global level

The report mentions that there are 1.3 billion multidimensionally poor people globally.

The top five countries with the largest number of people living in multidimensional poverty are India (381 million), Nigeria (93 million), Pakistan (83 million), Ethiopia (77 million) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (56million).

Women and Children: Almost two-thirds of global multidimensionally poor people – 836 million- live in households in which no female member has completed at least six years of schooling. These people live mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa (363 million) and South Asia (350 million).

The report also found that half of global multidimensionally poor people are children.

Women-led houses: One in six multidimensionally poor people across 108 countries live in female-headed households.

Key findings related to India

The report mentions that, in India, five out of six multidimensionally poor people are from lower tribes or castes.

The Scheduled Tribe group accounts for 9.4% of the population and is the poorest, with 65 million of the 129 million people living in multidimensional poverty. They account for about one-sixth of all people living in multidimensional poverty in India. 

Following the Scheduled Tribe group is the Scheduled Caste group with 33.3 percent – 94 million of 283 million people living in multidimensional poverty.

The report further said that 27.2 percent of the Other Backward Class group– 160 million of 588 million people — live in multidimensional poverty.

Overall, five out of six multidimensionally poor people in India live in households whose head is from a Scheduled Tribe, a Scheduled Caste or Other Backward Class.

In India, close to 12 percent of the Multidimensional poor population — 162 million people — live in female-headed households.

About the Multidimensional Poverty Index

The report is developed by Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) since 2010 for UNDP’s Human Development Reports. 

NITI Aayog is the nodal agency that has been assigned the responsibility of leveraging the monitoring mechanism of the Global MPI to drive reforms. 

According to Global MPI 2020, India is 62nd among 107 countries with an MPI score of 0.123 and 27.91% headcount ratio, based on the NFHS 4 (2015/16) data. 

Source: This post is based on the article “In India, 5 out of 6 multidimensionally poor are from lower tribes or castes: UN report” published in Times of India on 08 October 2021.