UN lauds India for role in poverty cut

“The world’s most populous countries, China and India, played a central role in the global reduction of poverty. China accounted for an almost two-third reduction in extreme poverty since 1990 and helped the extreme poverty rate in Eastern Asia drop from 61 per cent in 1990 to only four per cent in 2015,” the UN report said. It added that South Asia’s progress was almost as impressive, registering a decline from 52 per cent to 17 per cent for the same period.

The report credited MGNREGA and growth during 2004-11 for having contributed to reduction of extreme poverty. But it added that employment generation had been abysmal during the period, which, otherwise, would have brought down poverty and hunger on a much higher scale. The UN report advocated manufacturing as the way to create employment in India. However, the UN report also noted that 281 million undernourished people live in South Asia.

India remains home to one quarter of the world’s undernourished population and nearly a third of the world’s underweight children, according to a UN report on millennium development goals (MDG). India also has nearly a third of the world’s food insecure people, the report added. It also stated that India has already achieved the target of reducing poverty by half by official estimates.

“It has already achieved gender parity in primary school enrolment and is likely to reach parity in secondary and tertiary education also by 2015,” said the report released by NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy, along with Nagesh Kumar, head, UN-ESCAP, and Rebecca Tavares.