Over the past few months, 3 reports published by different agencies highlight the major failings on the poverty front at the national level. They point out that the pace of poverty reduction in India has not only slowed down in recent years but also that poverty levels have even rebounded during the pandemic. To make matters worse, India's ranking in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) has slipped further due to the enormous loss of livelihoods. Further pile up to problems, rural poverty has now gone up four times that of urban areas.
The report titled "Poverty and Shared Prosperity" by the World Bank estimates that the pandemic and the Ukraine war have added 70 million to those living below the extreme poverty line globally. And India, which experienced a pronounced economic contraction, was the worst affected. Though poverty estimates for 2020 are still being finalized, the initial numbers indicate a 56 million increase in the number of poor nationwide.
This shows that the government's welfare measures, like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee program and the supply of free food, have not been able to neutralize the impact of the massive loss of livelihoods during the pandemic.
But what is more worrying is that the deprivation scores show that another one-fifth of the population remains vulnerable to poverty. With 16.4% living below the poverty level and another one-fifth remaining vulnerable to poverty, the share of the deprived adds up to more than a third of India's total population.