Multidimensional Poverty in India: A Critical Review of Measurement, Uneven Deprivation, and Policy Transformation

Abstract India's National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) records one of the steepest recent declines in acute deprivation, yet aggregate headcounts reveal little about how poverty fell, where it fell, and what remains. This article combines a structured narrative review with a descriptive re-analysis of published National and Global MPI estimates to examine the sources, spatial distribution and composition of the decline between the fourth (2015–16) and fifth (2019–21) rounds of the National Family Health Survey. An exact logarithmic decomposition shows that about 89% of the 43.3% proportional reduction in the MPI reflected lower incidence, whereas intensity among the poor fell by only 5.8%. Across 36 States and Union Territories, percentage-point reductions were strongly related to baseline headcounts (OLS slope = − 0.36; R² = 0.83), but proportional reductions were not (r = 0.13, p = 0.45); the log–log elasticity was close to unity and the coefficient of variation rose from 0.74 to 0.84, indicating absolute but not relative convergence. The rural headcount remained about 3.7 times the urban headcount in both rounds. Infrastructure and financial-inclusion deprivations declined fastest, whereas the most heavily weighted capability indicators (nutrition, school attendance and years of schooling) declined by 16–18%, well below the 39.8% fall in the headcount. Overlap ratios further separate deprivations concentrated among the poor from widespread deficits that extend well beyond them. These descriptive, ecological findings indicate that further progress depends on reducing the depth and overlap of deprivation among the residual poor, not on headcount reduction alone.