India, April 27 -- India has significantly reduced poverty over the past decade, with extreme poverty declining from 16.2 percent in 2011-12 to 2.3 percent in 2022-23, bringing 171 million people above the poverty line, a World Bank report has said.

Rural extreme poverty dropped from 18.4 percent to 2.8 percent, while urban extreme poverty dropped from 10.7 percent to 1.1 percent.

This narrowed the rural-urban gap from 7.7 to 1.7 percentage points, which is a 16 percent annual decline, according to the multilateral agency's Poverty and Equity Brief.

The report said rural poverty dropped from 69 percent to 32.5 percent, and urban poverty from 43.5 percent to 17.2 percent, reducing the rural-urban gap from 25 to 15 percentage points with...