A grainy picture: Tough to measure Covid's impact on poverty without data

The impact of the pandemic on pov­erty and inequality in India has been a contested issue in the absence of govern­ment data

In October 2022, the World Bank put out a report saying nearly 56 million Indians might have plunged into extreme poverty in 2020-21 as a result of the economic shock induced by the Covid-19 pandemic, increasing the global tally by 71 million and making it the worst year for poverty reduction since World War II.

Last month, a year since that report came out, the 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 initially