The Niti Aayog recently released its National Multidimensional Poverty Index 2023, according to which the poverty headcount ratio declined from 24.85 percent in 2015-16 to 14.96 percent in 2019-21. In absolute numbers this translates to 135 million people exiting multidimensional poverty in this time period. In addition, a few days earlier, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released its own Multidimensional Poverty Index, which in a press note said that,...

KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-Newsclick.in White the redevelopment plan of Dharavi is likely to go ahead, issues related to rehabilitation of workers without proof of the tenement are a major worry. The redevelopment of Dharavi has been in waiting for close to two decades. Dharavi Development Plan (DDP) announcements in the past have been closely related to elections. It has again made it to the headlines because of the impending municipal elections in Mumbai and the...

Contrary to the rising economic distress on the ground since the last few years, the official press release related to the fourth Annual Report on the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) at first glance seems to give a rosy picture about the employment situation in India.  Defined as the percentage of persons unemployed among the persons in the labour force, the unemployment rate in usual status (principal activity status + subsidiary economic activity status)...

-Press release by Freedom from Bondage movement dated 6 September, 2022 New Delhi: As we mark #75thIndependenceDay & #AzadiKaAmritMahotsav, thousands of people who have been evicted from their homes in slums, Jhuggies, settlement colonies and informal sector workers who have been denied their livelihood without any rehabilitation have gathered at Jantar Mantar to raise their voice against the “Bulldozer Raj”.  The government is forcibly snatching the land of poor Dalits and...