India has officially eliminated ‘extreme poverty’, which can be seen through the sharp decline in headcount poverty ratio and stark increase in household consumption, a report authored by Surjit Bhalla and Karan Bhasin has said.

“This also means that time has come for India to graduate to a higher poverty line much like other countries. The transition to a higher poverty line provides an opportunity to redefine existing social protection programmes, particularly with the objective of better identification of intended beneficiaries and providing greater support to the genuine poor,” the report has added.

The report states that this has been a result of the government’s strong policy thrust on redistribution, which has led to strong inclusive growth in India over the last decade.

India has just released its official consumption expenditure data for 2022-23, providing the first official survey-based poverty estimates for India in over ten years.

According to the data, real per capita consumption growth has been recorded at 2.9 per cent per year since 2011-12. Under this, rural growth at 3.1 per cent was significantly higher than urban growth of 2.6 per cent. The data also presented an unprecedented decline in both urban and rural inequality.

The urban Gini (x100) (index to measure inequality) has declined from 36.7 to 31.9; the rural Gini declined from 28.7 to 27.0.