Introduction

One of the biggest ironies of India's rapidly growing and developing economy is

that poverty continues to prevail in a widespread way, mostly affecting the

already poor and minorities of the society. The benchmark to measure poverty

has been revised by the World Bank multiple times based on various factors, the

different definitions have resulted in widely varying estimates of poverty in India.

In 2019, the Indian government officially mentioned that about 6.7% of its

population is below The Poverty Line, and also the United Nations Millennium

Development Goals (MDG) program stated that 80 million people in India, out of

1021 billion, are living below the poverty line in 2018-2019.

The full form of BPL is Below Poverty Line. It is an economic benchmark related

to threshold income. It is fixed by the Government of India. It can help one

identify the financially weaker people and households in immediate need of

government aid.

The people whose income is below this threshold are below the poverty line.