Good News: India Sees Biggest Dip in Poverty

The poverty ratio of social groups revealed that in rural areas, scheduled tribes exhibit the highest level of poverty (47.4 percent), followed by scheduled castes (42.3 percent), and Other Backward Castes (31.9 percent), against 33.8 percent for all classes. In urban areas, SCs have a percentage of 34.1 followed by STs at 30.4 percent and OBC at 24.3 percent against 20.9 percent for all classes. It was noted that in rural Bihar and Chhattisgarh, nearly two-third of SCs and STs are poor, whereas in states such as Manipur, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh the poverty ratio for these groups is more than half.

Sikhs have the lowest poverty ratio in rural areas at 11.9 percent whereas in urban areas, Christians have the lowest proportion with 12.9 percent of poor. In rural areas, the poverty among Muslims is very high in states such as Assam, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Gujarat with a percentage of 53.6, 44.4, 34.4 and 31.4 respectively.

On the other hand in urban areas poverty ratio at all India level is highest for Muslims (33.9 percent). Similarly, the poverty ratio is also high for Muslims in states such as Rajasthan (29.5 percent), Uttar Pradesh (49.5 percent), Gujarat (42.4 percent), Bihar (56.5 percent) and West Bengal (34.9 percent).