Urban Poverty Highest In Manipur, Goa Has Lowest Poverty Rate

The poorest state in the country is Chhattisgarh, which has the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line. Apart from this, Goa has the lowest population of people living below the poverty line. This was revealed in a reply given by Union Minister of State for Statistics and Programme Implementation Rao Inderjit Singh to a question asked in the Lok Sabha two months ago by Krishna Pal Singh Yadav, MP from Guna in Madhya Pradesh.

In fact, BJP MP KP Yadav had asked the question in Lok Sabha whether the government has state-wise figures regarding the number of families living below the poverty line. In response, the Union Ministry of Statistics said:

• At 39.93%, Chhattishgarh has the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line 
• Jharkhand is in second place, with 36.96% population living below the poverty line
• Manipur ranks third in BPL in the country at 36.89%, while urban poverty is highest in Manipur
• Arunachal Pradesh has 34.67% of the population living below the poverty line 

Recently assembly elections were held in Bihar, which ranks fifth among the states living below the poverty line in the country. The state has a poverty rate of 33.74%.

Moving on to the top five states where the percentage of people living below the poverty line is the lowest in the country.

• In Goa, only 5.09% of people live below the poverty line and Goa is the top in the country
• Kerala has the second-best figure in the country after Goa, where only 7.05% of people are below the poverty line
• Northeastern state Sikkim is third with 8.19%
• Punjab is fourth in the country with 8.26% in terms of people living below the poverty line
• While Puducherry is at fifth position with 9.69%

It is worth noting that all the figures are for 2011-12, which were published in 2013. Several committees have been formed to assess poverty, but so far the government has not been able to collect any new figures whether poverty has increased or decreased in the last 6 years.