How can poverty assessment help facilitate more data-driven program design, implementation and monitoring of poverty-alleviation schemes?

According to multi-dimensional Poverty Index, 16.7% of India's population is multidimensionally poor. Poverty assessment will facilitate more data-driven program design, implementation and monitoring of poverty-alleviation schemes. NITI Aayog has come up with its own Multidimensional Poverty Index on the line of UN International - MPI. Methodology: MPI → Standard of living → Cooking fuel, Housing, Sanitation, Assets → Health → Child mortality, Life expectancy → Education → Expected year of schooling, Enrolment ratio.

By utilising this methodology, it can find out the head-count ratio and extent of poverty. Significance: - Giving decentralised data at state & district level - Giving importance of non-income measures like education, health - Help in formulating comprehensive poverty alleviation schemes - Data on both incidence and extent of poverty - Data-driven formulation and monitoring of schemes. Need is to have regular assessment and effective implementation of schemes like Poslan Abhiyaan, RTE (Right to Education), VTIJAY (Vijay Yaan), Swach Bharat.

— Nidhi Goyal · AIR 91