Seven Indian states are up for contesting assembly elections in 2022 — Goa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. A recent survey measuring the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by NITI Aayog calculated the wide divergence in the performance of poll-bound states based on twelve crucial indicators.
What Is The MPI?
The MPI is a substantive indicator of deprivation across multiple dimensions and verticals of poverty-deciding factors that complement poverty statistics based on per capita consumption expenditure. The three main dimensions observed while measuring MPI are health, education and rudimentary standard of living based on 12 key indicators.
Nutrition, School attendance, years of schooling, drinking water, diet, sanitation, housing and bank account make some of the most notable indicators of measuring the standard of living of people in a particular state. The yawning gap between the variation of rural and urban poverty is in five of the seven poll-bound states.
The national MPI as per the 2015 to 2016 National Family Health Survey was earlier measured to be 25.01%.
How Do The States Fare?
While political parties campaign and rally for elections, the national MPI of poll-bound state Uttar Pradesh shows the highest proportion of people who are multi-dimensionally poor with 37.79% of the total population. The lowest proportion of MPI indicated by Goa is 3.76% of its total population.
Among the 71 districts of UP, 64 districts show MPI more than the national average. In Gujarat, nine of 26 districts indicate higher MPI than the national average, while in Manipur, four out of nine districts signal higher MPI as well. Only one district of Almora in Uttarakhand out of 13 districts indicated MPI higher than the national average.
Punjab (20), on the other hand, came across with a lower MPI than the national average, unlike the other three states with Himachal (12) and Goa (2). UP, which is India’s most populous state, has an urban MPI of 18.07% and rural MPI more than double of urban, going up to 44.32%. It also rakes the statistics for the poorest cooking fuel indicator with 68.9% population deprived of it.
The housing indicator in UP is 67.5% and sanitation is 63.7%. The largest poll-bound state in terms of population and constituencies fares for a lower deprivation in bank accounts with 4.9% of people not owning bank accounts. The child and adolescent mortality rate of UP have gone to the 5% mark. The drinking water indicator stands sturdy at 5.4%.
Goa spools out with best indicators amongst poll-bound states of 2022 Assembly elections in MPI with barely any difference between the rural and urban MPI. The thin line between bot, urban and rural poverty indicators gives the state the very notion of a balanced dimensional index. The rural MPI of Goa is indexed to be 4.44%, while the urban MPI is an indication of 3.34% poverty.
This small state with very less population is deprived in indicators of school attendance with child and adolescent mortality of 0.6%. Other metrics that indicate Goa’s worst performance is in nutrition, sanitation and housing.
Similarly, Punjab has the second-best ratio amongst the other six states but has the highest deprivation in cooking fuel indicators, nutrition and housing that needs to be worked on. The state also shows the lowest deprivation in electricity.
Also, Himachal shows a wide divergence between rural poverty and urban poverty altogether. Manipur has the highest rural MPI that is even double the number of urban MPI. The sanitation indicator stands at 47.7% at par with other election contesting states in India.
With such figures going downhill in each state, it becomes starkly evident that the rural MPI of the poll-bound states is facing a setback in contrast with urban MPI in each state. The housing and sanitation of each poll-bound state seemingly goes from 30 to 40%, which entails a lot of work by the rallying parties to mend the cracks within.
The indicators are not just mere measurements for these states. Instead, for states with the highest indicators like Goa, a lot is still left to gauge upon since this measurement and analysis encompasses comparison between only a few poll-bound states when juxtaposed together.