The World Bank's assessment is testament to the fact that any study of inequality in India requires a multi-dimensional and inter-sectional approach.
How to Measure India's Inequality - The Wire
the World Bank report which has claimed a drastic reduction in the state of inequality in India between 2011 and 2022 . the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) also released the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) National Indicator Framework Progress Report 2025, which tracks India’s progress across 17 SDGs using 284 indicators. This report presents time-series data from various line ministries and offers a macro-level diagnostic lens into the country’s trajectory toward Agenda 2030, a United Nations plan adopted in 2015 to guide global development efforts.
There are serious issues with the larger interpretation of the World Bank assessment where consumption-based inequality is mapped with income-inequality scales across countries – an effort which is like comparing apples with oranges.
The Access (In)Equality Index (AEI) 2025, developed by the Centre for New Economic Studies (CNES), can serve as a critical component to this debate. It draws largely from the same official data sources, but reorganises indicators through a disaggregated, intersectional lens grounded in the 4A framework: availability, affordability, approachability, and appropriateness.
It then evaluates these across five measurable pillars – access to basic amenities, access to healthcare, access to education, access to socio-economic security, and access to legal recourse – thereby capturing the often overlooked distributive aspects of the income-wealth based criteria on which most ‘inequality’ and ‘poverty’ measurement studies are based on. These aspects are also overlooked in the SDG-NIF analytical framework.
by Deepanshu Mohan
22/07/2025