A count of India's poor: It's a challenge in absence of govt data

Estimating extreme poverty in the country becomes a controversial task, leads to differing estimates

The World Bank in October 2022 put out a report that said about 56 million Indians may have plunged into extreme poverty in 2020-21 as a result of the economic shock of the coronavirus, increasing the global tally by 71 million and making it the worst year for poverty reduction since World War II.

Last month, one year after that report, the World Bank significantly adjusted its estimates, suggesting that the number of people who fell into poverty in India in 2020-21 was approximately 29.5 million. This indicates a less severe impact of the pandemic on poverty than projected initially.