When the United Nations Development Programme released its 2019 Multidimensional Poverty Index, it celebrated a striking figure: India had moved 271 million people out of poverty between 2005-06 and 2016-17. Six years later, that number looks almost modest.
According to subsequent UNDP and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) reports, 415 million Indians escaped multidimensional poverty between 2005-06 and 2019-21 — a 15-year stretch the UN called a “historic change” and the largest such reduction recorded by any country. The national poverty rate fell from 55.1 percent to 16.4 percent over that period.
The 2025 Global MPI, released on October 17, confirms the trajectory has held. India’s headcount ratio remains at 16.4 percent based on the most recent survey data, with roughly 235 million people still classified as multidimensionally poor and another 18.7 percent considered vulnerable to falling back in. The country has effectively put the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of halving poverty by 2030 within reach — and done so at a scale no other nation has matched.
What “multidimensional poverty” actually measures
Unlike traditional income-based poverty lines, the Multidimensional Poverty Index, developed jointly by UNDP and OPHI in 2010, evaluates deprivation across ten indicators in three dimensions: health (nutrition, child mortality), education (years of schooling, school attendance), and standard of living (cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets). A person is considered multidimensionally poor if they fall short on at least one-third of these weighted indicators.
The framework captures something income figures miss. A family might earn just above a poverty line yet still lack clean water, electricity, or access to schooling. The MPI counts those overlapping hardships as poverty in their own right.
Where the gains came from
India’s National MPI, developed by NITI Aayog with UNDP and OPHI support, allows progress to be tracked at the state and district level. A January 2024 NITI Aayog discussion paper reported that multidimensional poverty in India fell from 29.17 percent in 2013-14 to 11.28 percent in 2022-23 by the national measure — lifting roughly 248 million people out of poverty over nine years.
The biggest absolute gains came from India’s most populous and historically poorest states. Uttar Pradesh accounted for 59.4 million of those who escaped poverty, followed by Bihar with 37.7 million, Madhya Pradesh with 23 million, and Rajasthan with 18.7 million. Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Himachal Pradesh now post India’s lowest poverty rates, with Kerala approaching extreme-poverty-free status.
The pattern is also pro-poor in a deeper sense: the steepest absolute improvements have come from rural areas, children, and the poorest caste and religious groups — the populations that previous decades of growth often left behind.
A new complication: climate
The 2025 report, titled “Overlapping Hardships: Poverty and Climate Hazards,” introduces a new analytic layer by overlaying climate hazard data on poverty maps. The results are sobering for India. Large regions of the country face a severe combination of poverty, extreme heat, flooding, and air pollution — and climate shocks displaced 32 million people globally in 2022 alone.
This matters because climate disasters can reverse poverty gains quickly. A household lifted above the threshold by improved sanitation or electrification can be pushed back below it by a single flood that destroys assets, disrupts schooling, and damages health.
The broader picture
Globally, 1.1 billion people across 109 countries still live in acute multidimensional poverty — about 18.3 percent of the populations measured. Nearly half of them live in just six middle-income countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Tanzania.
India’s achievement does not erase that figure. But it reframes what is possible. Twenty-five countries have halved their MPI values in 15 years or less, with some doing it in as few as four. If the world’s most populous nation can move hundreds of millions out of overlapping deprivation in a generation, the SDG target of halving poverty by 2030 is no longer aspirational arithmetic. It is a benchmark someone has already cleared.
The question now is whether the gains can hold as climate pressures mount.
For the UNDP’s report click here.
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