Number of poor declined to 269.3 million: Survey

The number of poor in India has declined from 407.1 million in 2004-05 to 269.3 million in 2011-12, with an average annual fall of 2.2 percentage points in these eight years, says the Economic Survey 2013-14.

"The poverty ratio - based on the monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) of Rs.816 for rural areas and Rs.1,000 for urban areas in 2011-12 at all India level - for rural and urban areas has declined from 37.2 percent in 2004-05 to 21.9 per cent in 2011-12," said the survey, tabled in parliament by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, a day ahead of the national budget for 2014-15.

"The number of poor declined from 407.1 million in 2004-05 to 269.3 million in 2011-12 with an average annual decline of 2.2 percentage points during 2004-05 to 2011-12," the survey said.

The survey also mentioned that the expenditure on education has gone up from 2.9 percent in 2008-09 to 3.3 percent in 2013-14.

"There is need not only to increase it further, but also address quality issues," said the survey.

"Expenditure on health is just 1.4 percent of GDP. Though, in 2013-14, there was an increase in outlay by 7.44 percent over the previous year, still a lot more needs to be done to provide quality and affordable healthcare for the large Indian population," it added.

According to the United Nations Human Development Report (HDR) 2013, India has slipped in the Human Development Index (HDI) with its overall global ranking to 136 (out of the 186 countries) as against 134 in 2012.