A new United Nations study finds that India’s recent eco­nomic growth has been an uneven one. Uneven mean­ing that some states in India have had poverty num­bers reduced while oth­ers have increased.

From Head­lines India, we find out more of the study’s conclusions.

“In recent years, eco­nomic growth has been rel­a­tively high in three largest coun­tries in the region, India, Bangladesh and Pak­istan, which recorded annual growth per capita above 5 per­cent in 2000–2006,” accord­ing to “Rethink­ing Poverty” report of the UN’s Depart­ment of Eco­nomic and Social Affairs.

“As a result, the sub-region saw the pro­por­tion of those liv­ing in extreme poverty decline in rel­a­tive terms, from a high of 59 per­cent in 1981 to 40 per­cent in 2005,” it said.

“How­ever, such growth has not been suf­fi­ciently inclu­sive and pro-poor to reduce the absolute num­bers of peo­ple liv­ing in poverty. Income inequal­i­ties have grown steadily in India since the 1980s, in borh urban and rural areas.”

Giv­ing some exam­ples, the report says the lev­els of poverty var­ied sig­nif­i­cantly within India where Andhra Pradesh, Kar­nataka, Ker­ala and Tamil Nadu saw the share of poor decline from 18 per­cent in 1993–94 to 15 per­cent in 1999–2000.

At the same time, the share of the total num­ber of poor in Bihar, Orissa, Mad­hya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Ben­gal jumped from 57 per­cent to 63 per­cent dur­ing the same period.

“There­fore, although there has been a steady decline in the inci­dence of poverty in India, the efforts of the gov­ern­ment have not resulted in a uni­form impact across regions. There remain regions where poverty is still deep and severe and hence require greater attention.”

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