Odisha, which was the ninth poorest state in the NITI Aayog’s report released in 2021, has slipped one position to become the eighth poorest state in India.
Even though 62,62,000 people in the state moved out of poverty in the last five years, the position of the state has continuously been worsening. In the NITI Ayog’s National Multidimensional Poverty Index of 2021, Odisha was the ninth poorest state after Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Assam, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.
But in the recently published list, Odisha has been placed in the eighth position after Bihar, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Chhattisgarh. At the same time, the poverty percentage of 15.68 percent has been above the national percentage of 14.96 percent.
Malkangiri is the poorest district in the state.
At the same time Rajasthan, which was in the eighth position in the 2021 report, has been placed at 10th position in the recently published report.
According to the report that was released by the government’s think tank’s Vice-Chairman Suman Bery, as many as 13.5 crore people in India moved out of multidimensional poverty between 2015-16 and 2019-21. The number of individuals living in multidimensional poverty in India has come down from 24.85 percent to 14.96 percent.
The report further states that Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan observed the fastest reduction in the proportion of multidimensional poor. Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 3.43 crore people existing in multidimensional poverty in the last five years, followed by Bihar (2.25 crore) and Madhya Pradesh (1.36 crore), the report stated.