India Makes Historic Strides in Poverty Alleviation, While Pakistan Struggles: Report
A recent report highlights Indias success in reducing poverty, contrasting sharply with Pakistans rising poverty levels.
New Delhi, November 12 (Daily Kiran) : India and Pakistan present starkly contrasting narratives in the fight against poverty, according to a recent article in the European Times. While India has prioritized poverty alleviation as a central tenet of its economic policy, Pakistan has relegated the issue to a secondary concern, often overshadowed by more powerful institutional interests in Islamabad.
The report indicates that India has achieved a remarkable reduction in extreme poverty at an unprecedented pace. In contrast, Pakistan has experienced a reversal of fortune, remaining isolated among South Asia’s larger economies.
Citing the World Bank’s “Poverty and Equality Report” released this month, the article notes that India’s extreme poverty rate plummeted from 27.1% in 2011 to just 2.6% in 2023, based on a daily income threshold of $3. Over the past 12 years, nearly 496 million people have risen above this poverty line.
These statistics are not merely government claims but are drawn from the World Bank, an institution often referenced by Islamabad for its own benefit.
The report credits India’s significant drop in poverty to the creation of approximately 134 million jobs between 2017 and 2023, nearly double the growth of the working-age population. The surge in employment among rural women has also played a crucial role. Additionally, an expansion of food assistance programs has reached a majority of the population, while a distribution system based on Aadhaar identification and direct bank transfers has eliminated intermediaries, preventing an estimated ₹3.48 lakh crore in fraud by 2024.
Conversely, Pakistan has moved in the opposite direction. The World Bank report reveals that the extreme poverty rate in Pakistan rose from 16.5% in 2018-19 to 23.0% by 2024, marking a 6.4 percentage point increase. This translates to a nearly 40% relative rise, leaving about 58 million people below the poverty line.
Pakistan’s Planning Ministry reports that the national poverty rate has climbed from 21.9% to 28.9%. Inequality has also worsened, with the Gini coefficient increasing from 28.4 to 32.7, indicating the most significant impact on the lowest-income families.
The report highlights that approximately 48% of the extremely poor in the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are located in Pakistan. Notably, this figure is disproportionate, as the country’s population accounts for less than one-third of the World Bank’s regional average, and its poverty rate is about 1.6 times higher than the regional average.
