Read the newspaper article given below and answer the following questions:

140 million pulled out of poverty in India since 2015-16, says UNDP

Incidence of multidimensional poverty declined from 55.1% in 2005-06 to 16.4% in 2019-21.

According to recent estimates by the World Bank, around 56 million Indians might have plunged into extreme poverty in 2020 due to the pandemic, contributing to the 71 million increase in the global tally.

India’s multidimensional poverty fell by 140 million between 2015-16 and 2019-2021 compared to a decline of 275 million between 2005-06 and 2015-16, according to the latest assessment by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Using the latest data from the National Family Health Survey, the report said multidimensional poverty declined faster from 2015-2016 to 2019-21 at 11.9 percent year-on-year - as against an 8.1 percent per year fall from 2005-2006 to 2015-2016. The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), released by the UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), looks beyond income as a measurement of poverty to understand how people experience poverty in different aspects of their daily lives through three parameters -- health, education, and standard of living – which are further divided into 10 indicators.

The MPI value for India fell from 0.283 in 2005-2006 to 0.122 in 2015-2016, then further to 0.069 in 2019-2021, in sync with the decline in the incidence of poverty from 55.1 percent to 27.7 percent to 16.4 percent. “In roughly 15 years… the MPI value, the incidence of poverty, and deprivations among poor people in the 10 MPI indicators were each more than halved,” the report added. According to recent estimates by the World Bank, around 56 million Indians might have plunged into extreme poverty in 2020 due to the pandemic, contributing to the 71 million increase in the global tally. To be sure, the World Bank doesn’t measure multidimensional poverty and its poverty estimates are based on an income of $2.15 per day at purchasing power parity (PPP).

Rural-urban disparities are stark in multidimensional poverty reduction: The percentage of people who are poor is 21.2 percent in rural areas against 5.5 percent in urban areas. “Rural areas account for nearly 90 percent of poor people: 205 million of the nearly 229 million poor people live in rural areas — making them a clear priority,” the report said.

MPI is an index that measures poverty by looking beyond the income of an individual. According to you, which of the following is not an instrument for the estimation of poverty?

Philips index

Due to various limitations in the official estimation of poverty, scholars have attempted to find alternative methods. For instance, Amartya Sen, a noted Nobel Laureate, has developed an index known as Sen Index. There are other tools also such as Poverty Gap Index and Squared Poverty Gap.