Analysis of Sansad TV Discussion: Multidimensional Poverty

Table of Contents

Context

Based on Multidimensional Poverty, NITI Aayog has recently released the state-wise National Multidimensional Poverty Index or MPI in line with the global index released by the United Nations each year.

Introduction

NITI Aayog is the nodal Ministry for the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI).
The National MPI Project is aimed at deconstructing the Global MPI and creating a globally aligned and yet customised India MPI for drawing up comprehensive Reform Action Plans with the larger goal of improving India’s position in the Global MPI rankings.
As the nodal Ministry for MPI, NITI Aayog is also responsible for engaging with the publishing agencies of the index; ranking States and Union Territories based on their performance and has also constituted an inter-ministerial MPI Coordination Committee (MPICC) to consult twelve Line Ministries mapped to each National MPI indicator.

What is Global MPI?

It complements traditional monetary poverty measures by capturing the acute deprivations in health, education, and living standards that a person faces simultaneously.
The global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021 compares acute multidimensional poverty for 109 countries in developing regions.
These countries are home to 5.9 billion people, three-quarters of the world’s population.
Of these people, 1.3 billion (21.7%) are identified by the 2021 global MPI as multidimensionally poor.
The 2021 global MPI shows both who is poor – in terms of their age group, subnational region, and whether they live in an urban or rural area – and how they are poor – in terms of which overlapping deprivations they face.
According to Global MPI 2021, India’s rank is 66 out of 109 countries.

What is National MPI?

It has three equally weighted dimensions — health, education, and standard of living — which in turn are represented by 12 indicators such as nutrition, school attendance, years of schooling, drinking water, sanitation, housing, bank accounts, among others.
The National MPI Project is the first attempt in years to define poverty measures and is aimed at deconstructing the Global MPI and creating a globally aligned and yet customised India MPI.
National Multidimensional Poverty Index’s Baseline Report is based on National Family Health Survey 4, which was conducted in 2015-16. NFHS is conducted by the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.
National Multidimensional Poverty Index’s Baseline Report based on NFHS-4 (2015-16) is a contribution towards measuring progress towards target 1.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which aims at reducing “at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions”.
Across three dimensions of health, education and standard of living, it includes indicators on nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, maternal care, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, bank accounts and assets.
The household microdata collected at the unit level for the NFHS serves as the basis of the computation of National MPI.
This unit-level micro data collected in 2015-16 has been used in the current MPI report to derive an idea of baseline multidimensional poverty i.e. where the country was with respect to MPI before the full-scale rollout of the above-mentioned schemes.
The MPI identifies 25.01 per cent of the population as multidimensionally poor.
The progress of the country with respect to this baseline will be measured using the NFHS-5 data collected in 2019-20.

What is Global Indices for Reforms and Growth (GIRG)?

It is GOI’s Cabinet Secretary’s initiative, for monitoring country’s performance across 29 global indices including Human Development Index (HDI), Global Hunger Index (GHI), Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), Human Capital Index (HCI), Global Innovation Index (GII), among others.
This exercise is aimed at leveraging the monitoring mechanism of important social, economic, and other internationally recognised indices, enabling the utilisation of these indices as tools for bringing about reforms to improve outcomes and correspondingly reflect them in India’s performance in these indices globally.