PremiumNutritional security also demands that our basic staples are biofortified with iron and zinc, as wheat and rice have become deficient in these. This is a result of impoverished soils, starved of soil organic carbonReform is a continuous process, and the time has come to rationalise the food subsidy bill and reorient it towards nutritional security. Our malnutrition numbers, especially of children below the age of five, are still very high. (File)6 min readNov 9, 2026 06:25 AM IST First published on: Nov 9, 2026 at 06:24 AM ISTThe World Bank’s India Poverty and Equity Brief, released in October 2026, has renewed the debate on poverty in India. It shows extreme poverty, measured at the international line of $3.00 per person per day (2021, Purchasing Power Parity or PPP), falling from 27.1 per cent in 2011 to 2.6 per cent in 2023. At $4.20 a day, poverty fell from 57.7 per cent to 16.1 per cent over the same period, which the Bank calls one of the fastest declines in the world. The estimates draw on three official household consumption and expenditure surveys (HCES): The 2011–12, 2022–23 and 2023–24 HCES. The Bank cautions that part of the latest gain reflects better measurement, not just better lives.The World Bank’s long series on poverty status tells a more interesting story. In 1983, 78 per cent of Indians lived below $4.20 a day (PPP). By 2004, after two decades that included the 1991 economic reforms, the figure was still at 74.5 per cent, a decline of just 0.2 per cent a year. Then the pace of decline in poverty accelerated sharply. Poverty fell to 16.1 per cent in 2023 and an estimated 14.2 per cent in 2026, a decline of about 7.2 per cent per year, more than 30 times the earlier pace. At $3 a day, poverty fell from 46.4 per cent in 2004 to 2.6 per cent in 2023, about 14 per cent a year, against 0.4 per cent during 1983–2004. NITI Aayog’s multidimensional poverty index, built from 12 indicators of health, nutrition, education and living standards, also tells a similar story: Poverty fell from 55.3 per cent in 2005 to 11.3 per cent in 2022. Statistically, 2004 is the inflection point in India’s poverty drop chart (see the infographics).© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd ShareWhatsapptwitterFacebook