New Delhi, June 9 -- According to recent World Bank data, extreme poverty in India fell sharply from 27.1% in 2011-12 to just 5.3% in 2022-23, suggesting that 269 million people have been lifted out of poverty. While this achievement is nominally and statistically significant, the finding prompts a deeper and more structural methodological question: Are we counting fewer people as 'poor' in India, or are we failing to capture the full spectrum of vulnerabilities that persist among people in relative poverty which discussions based on 'poverty line' measurement miss in scope and reality?

Historically, poverty measurement in India relied predominantly on income or consumption. This approach universally classifies individuals as poor or non...