State of the states

Acute poverty prevails in eight Indian states (421 million people in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal), which together account for more poor people than in the 26 poorest African nations combined (410 million), a new ‘multidimensional’ measure of global poverty has said. The research findings of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), developed and applied by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative with UNDP support, were made available Monday. The MPI supplants the Human Poverty Index, which has been included in the annual Human Development Reports since 1997.