Soumyabrata Mondal
In a striking announcement this April, the World Bank claimed that India has successfully lifted 171 million people out of extreme poverty over the decade spanning 2011-12 to 2022-23. According to its latest Poverty and Equity Brief, extreme poverty in India – defined as living on less than $2.15 per day (in 2017 PPP terms) – dropped from 16.2 percent to a mere 2.3 percent.
At first glance, this seems a staggering achievement for a country historically burdened with widespread deprivation. Yet, as one probes beneath these numbers, a critical question arises: has poverty truly declined to the extent these statistics suggest, or are we witnessing yet another episode of data-driven myth-making divorced from India’s lived realities?
This piece attempts to unpack the duality between official narratives and ground realities, examining whether India’s poverty story is one of substantive transformation or statistical optimism.
The World Bank report noted that rural extreme poverty fell from 18.4 percent in 2011-12 to 2.8 percent in 2022-23, while urban extreme poverty declined from 10.7 percent to 1.1 percent. The gap between rural and urban poverty narrowed from 7.7 to 1.7 percentage points, reflecting an annual decline of 16 percent. Furthermore, India transitioned into a lower-middle-income country during this period, with poverty at the $3.65 per day line falling from 61.8 percent to 28.1 percent, lifting 378 million people out of poverty.
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