From CK Nayak
NEW DELHI, July 18: Meghalaya, which aspires to become a $10 billion economy by 2028, has been found to be India’s second poorest state after Bihar although the overall poverty in the country showed substantial decline between 2015 and 2021, a NITI Aayog report said.
Bihar topped the chart in terms of deprivation (poverty) with 37.21% of its population poor, followed by Meghalaya (31.3%), Uttar Pradesh (30.03%), Jharkhand (29.75%) and Arunachal Pradesh (22.21%).
The deprivation score is the sum of weighted status of all indicators for an individual who scores more than 0.33 as measured by NITI Aayog based on National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5).
The Niti Aayog’s second edition of Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) has projected that about 14.96% of the country’s population is ‘multidimensionally’ poor. In absolute terms, 207.9 million (20.79 crore) Indians are poor and face deprivation in multiple development areas, as per population projections for the year 2021.
Ironically, this year’s Meghalaya budget, presented by Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma, laid emphasis on people-centric all-round development. Meghalaya also envisages to make it to the list of top 10 states by 2032.
The report of Niti Aayog claimed that multidimensional poverty in India has declined from 24.85% to 14.96% between 2015-16 and 2019-21. The primary data source to arrive at these figures was NFHS-5. The key verticals used to arrive at the national MPI were health, education, and standard of living.
On one of the indicators ‘asset ownership’, a household is deprived if it does not own more than one of the assets such as radio, TV, telephone, computer, animal cart, bicycle, motorbike, or refrigerator, and does not own a car or a truck. In Meghalaya, 37.07% of the population didn’t have the required ownership followed by Nagaland, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand.
By another indicator, a household is considered deprived if any of its child or adolescent, under 18 years of age, died in the five-year period preceding the survey due to lack of access to healthcare, infectious diseases, malnutrition, iron deficiency (anaemia), or an unsafe environment.
In this indicator of as per ‘child and adolescent mortality’, Bihar has 4.14% of the population deprived – the highest. Bihar is followed by Uttar Pradesh (3.54%), Meghalaya (2.99%), Jharkhand (2.57%), and Chhattisgarh (2.33%).
A household is also considered deprived if not even one member, aged 10 years or older, has completed six years of schooling. Bihar performed the worst followed by Meghalaya, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, in this case.
Similarly, a household is deprived if any school-aged child is not attending school up to the age at which he/she will complete class 8. Uttar Pradesh ranked top in terms of this deprivation followed by Bihar, Jharkhand, Meghalaya and Madhya Pradesh.
In the case of drinking water, Manipur fared the worst with 26.77% people considered deprived followed by Meghalaya, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Assam, the report said.
Meghalaya was also found to be the worst performer as far as banking is concerned. A whopping 9.01% of the population in Meghalaya does not have a bank account.
