Few economic statistics capture a nation's transformation as vividly as this one. According to the World Bank's October 2026 Poverty and Equity Brief, about 496 million Indians rose above the $4.20-a-day poverty line between 2011 and 2023, the benchmark for lower-middle-income economies. The headcount ratio of extreme poverty, measured at $3 a day in purchasing power parity terms, fell from 27.1% to 2.6%. In twelve years, India went from one in four citizens living in destitution to one in forty. It is among the fastest poverty reductions ever recorded.

Nor is the World Bank alone. Its 2.6% is the highest of the recent estimates. Economists Surjit Bhalla and Karan Bhasin, writing for the Brookings Institution in 2024, put extreme poverty at about 2% and declared it eliminated, even without counting free rations. SBI Research estimated in early 2025 that overall poverty had fallen below 5%. Arvind Panagariya, chairman of the 16th Finance Commission, found that it fell from 21.9% to 2.3% by 2023-24 and called it virtually eliminated. Different poverty lines, different methods, one conclusion: extreme poverty in India is now close to zero.

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