The World Bank report on poverty in India, which claims that the country recorded one of the fastest poverty declines globally, has come at the right time for the BJP government currently under the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. But the poverty reduction story seems almost extraordinary. According to the World Bank, between 2011 and 2023, the proportion of Indians living below the lower-middle-income poverty line of $4.20 a day fell from 57.7 per cent to 16.1 per cent. An estimated 496 million people moved above this threshold. Extreme poverty, measured against the $3-a-day benchmark, declined from 27.1 per cent to 2.6 per cent.

Poverty Reduction Figures Need Context

However, the numbers hide fundamental problems if one accepts them at face........

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