After Meghalaya, Assam is the poorest state in the Northeast: NITI Aayog

NEW DELHI: According to the inaugural Multi-dimensional Poverty Index issued by NITI Aayog on Friday, Assam stands at the lowest in the nation in the Northeastern region, trailing only Meghalaya.

With 32.67 percent, Assam is the poorest state in the Northeast, following after Nagaland (10th with 25.23 percent), Arunachal Pradesh (11th with 24.27 percent), Manipur (14th with 17.89 percent), Tripura (16th with 16.65 percent), and Mizoram (17th with 16.65 percent) (22nd with 9.80 percent ). Meghalaya is India's fifth poorest state.

According to the survey, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh are the poorest states in India, with Assam coming in sixth place.

According to the research, Bihar has the highest poverty rate at 51.91 percent, trailed by Jharkhand with 42.16 percent, Uttar Pradesh with 37.79 percent, Madhya Pradesh with 36.65 percent, and Meghalaya with 32.67 percent. Kerala has the lowest poverty rate of 0.71 percent, whereas Goa (3.76 percent), Sikkim (3.82 percent), Tamil Nadu (4.89 percent), and Punjab (5.59 percent) have the highest. Dadra and Nagar Haveli (27.36 percent) is the poorer of the union territories (UTs), while Puducherry (1.72 percent) is the richest.

Meghalaya seems to have the 10th percentage of malnourished persons among all states, at 37.05 percent. Bihar (51.88 percent) is at the top of the list, followed by Jharkhand (47.99 percent), Madhya Pradesh (45.49 percent), Uttar Pradesh (44.47 percent), and Chhattisgarh (44.47 percent) (43.02 percent ). Except for Assam (39.67 percent), all Northeastern states score better in terms of nourishment than Meghalaya.

Meghalaya (3.10 percent) has the sixth-highest rate of children and youth death rates among states in the country. Uttar Pradesh tops the list, with a death rate of 4.97 percent. Meghalaya has the fifth-worst rate in the country, with 31.70 percent of women without access to maternity services. Nagaland (33.06 percent) has a lower rate than Meghalaya in the Northeast.

Whenever it refers to the percentage of the population without years of education, the state is second only to Bihar. Meghalaya had 19.71 percent of the vote, whereas Bihar had 26.27 percent. With 5.40 percent of the population being unable to attend school, the state ranks eighth in the country. "The establishment of the National Multidimensional Poverty Index of India is an indispensable asset toward creating a public policy instrument that monitors multidimensional poverty, informs evidence-based and targeted policymaking," Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar said in the prologue. 

This collection of processes of India's first national MPI measurement is known as the National Family Health Survey's reference period of 2015-16, according to Kumar (NFHS). He said that the national MPI is made up of 12 necessary elements that encompass issues including food and wellbeing, schooling, and quality of living. "While this paper is an essential first step towards mainstreaming MPI, it is based on a five-year-old dataset." "In recent years, the effectiveness of several development programmes has resulted in improvement in critical dimensions such as healthcare, literacy, and living conditions," it noted. 

Also Read: Happy Birthday Bhushan Kumar: The Owner of T-Series Turns 44

Also Watch: