The Great Indian Poverty Debate: Fresh estimates ignite new discussions

A recent State Bank of India (SBI) study says that India’s poverty was well below 5 per cent in 2023-24. This was after the government released a fact sheet from the 2023-24 Household Consumer Expenditure Survey (HCES), recording a decline in poverty from 7.2 per cent in 2022-23 to 4.9 per cent in rural areas, and from 4.6 per cent to 4.1 per cent in urban areas during the same period. 

The decline in poverty at the national level, by 17.2 percentage points, however, would be considered very sharp during the period from 2011-12 to 2023-24, with the poverty figure