COVID-19 could push 260 million Indians into poverty

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EXCLUSIVE: Coronavirus Could Reduce 260 Million Indians To Poverty, Say Oxford University Researchers

At least 260 million people in India could be pushed into poverty due to the economic fallout from coronavirus, putting at risk historic gains made in poverty alleviation, according to estimates from United Nations and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).

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The 2019 UN Development Programme’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), developed in collaboration with OPHI at the University of Oxford, had reported in a study last year that India lifted 271 million people out of poverty between 2006 and 2016. This was the fastest absolute reduction in poverty among ten countries encompassing close to 2 billion people, the researchers noted, even as 369 million Indians remained poor, the highest globally.

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But as coronavirus batters India’s economy and hundreds of millions of Indians struggle to eke out a living under a punitive national lockdown, more than 260 million Indians—who are presently classified as vulnerable to poverty—are at risk of becoming the new poor, according to researchers such as the OPHI’s Sabina Alkire who worked on the 2019 numbers.