NEW DELHI, India / AsiaWire.IO / – India lifted an estimated 496 million people out of poverty between 2011 and 2023, according to the World Bank’s October 2026 Poverty and Equity Brief. The share of Indians living in extreme poverty fell from 27.1% to just 2.6% over the period. The World Bank described the progress as “one of the fastest poverty declines in the world.” It said India improved on both monetary and non-monetary measures of poverty.
The proportion of people living below the lower-middle-income poverty line of $4.20 a day, measured at 2021 purchasing power parity, fell from 57.7% to 16.1%. The World Bank credited strong consumption growth and rising employment, particularly among women. Expanded social transfers, including food subsidies, also played a major role. Together, these forces lifted living standards for hundreds of millions of households across the country.
The gains extend well beyond income. Poverty measured by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative’s Multidimensional Poverty Index fell from 53.8% in 2005-06 to 16.4% in 2019-21. The World Bank’s own multidimensional poverty measure stood at 15.5% in 2022-23. These indicators track access to essentials such as nutrition, schooling, sanitation, housing and cooking fuel.
Welfare programs at massive scale
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has rolled out welfare programs on an unprecedented scale since 2014. The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana provides free food grains to about 800 million people, and in 2024 it was extended for five more years. The Jan Dhan financial inclusion drive has opened more than 500 million bank accounts. Direct benefit transfers now deliver subsidies straight into those accounts.
The government has also laid new foundations for growth. The Unified Payments Interface has made India a global leader in real-time digital payments, processing billions of transactions every month. Programs such as Swachh Bharat, the Ujjwala cooking gas scheme and the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana housing scheme have expanded access to sanitation, clean fuel and homes. These are the same deprivations tracked by multidimensional poverty measures.
Among the world’s top five economies
India’s rapid expansion has kept it among the world’s five largest economies. The economy grew 7.8% in the April-June quarter, and the International Monetary Fund raised its 2026 growth forecast for India to 7%. The IMF projects that India will overtake Japan to become the world’s fourth-largest economy in 2027, with GDP reaching $4.52 trillion. Modi has set a goal of making India a developed nation by 2047.
Infrastructure investment, the Make in India campaign and production-linked incentive schemes aim to expand manufacturing and create jobs. India’s global profile has risen as well, with its G20 presidency in 2023, the Chandrayaan-3 Moon landing and its 2026 chairship of BRICS. The government has contrasted the pace of these gains with the slower progress of earlier decades. Supporters see the poverty data as evidence that the approach is working.
Jobs and regional gaps remain
The World Bank expects poverty to keep falling, though more slowly. Its projections show the poverty rate at the $4.20 threshold dropping from 14.2% in 2026 to 12.1% by 2028. It cautioned that these are indicative microsimulation estimates that could change with new data. Around 57% of India’s poor live in a contiguous belt from Uttar Pradesh to West Bengal, making productive jobs in those states vital.
Employment rose by about 134 million people between 2017 and 2023, nearly twice the growth in the working-age population, driven largely by rural women entering paid work. However, youth unemployment rose from 14.6% to 15.9% between the first quarters of FY26 and FY27. Real earnings stayed broadly flat, with job growth concentrated in lower-productivity work. The report noted that some gains may reflect improved measurement.