The country's first MultidimensionalPoverty Index (Multidimensional Poverty Index-MPI) has been released by NITIAayog.
As per the index, 51.91 per cent populationof Bihar is poor, followed 42.16 per cent in Jharkhand, 37.79 per cent in UttarPradesh. While Madhya Pradesh (36.65 per cent) has been placed fourth in theindex, Meghalaya (32.67 per cent) is at the fifth spot.
Kerala (0.71 per cent), Goa (3.76 per cent),Sikkim (3.82 per cent), Tamil Nadu (4.89 per cent) and Punjab (5.59 per cent)have registered the lowest poverty across India and are at the bottom of theindex.
Bihar also ranks at the top in the list ofstates with houses having no electricity connection. Uttar Pradesh, Assam,Jharkhand and Odisha are the other top four states in the list.
The report said, India's MPI has threeequally weighted dimensions, health, education and standard of living - whichare represented by 12 indicators namely nutrition, child and adolescentmortality, antenatal care, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel,sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets and bank accounts.
Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar in hisforeword said, "The development of the National Multidimensional PovertyIndex of India is an important contribution towards instituting a public policytool which monitors multidimensional poverty, informs evidence-based andfocused interventions, thereby ensuring that no one is left behind."
Under the sustainable development goals,India aims to reduce “at least by half the proportion of men, women andchildren of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according tonational definitions”.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)framework, adopted by 193 countries in 2015, has redefined developmentpolicies, government priorities, and metrics for measuring development progressacross the world.
The Sustainable Development Goals framework,with 17 global goals and 169 targets, is significantly wider in scope and scalerelative to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), its predecessor.