Human Development and Poverty - a Perspective Across Indian States

The ultimate objective of development planning and policies is to increase social welfare and well-being of the society. As income alone is an incomplete measure of well-being of any society, human development attempts to capture quantitative as well as qualitative aspects of human well-being by encapsulating indicatorsof longevity, literacy and a decent standard of living. Human development is about enlarging choices, whereas poverty implies denial to the opportunities and choices most basic to human development. The main concern of this paper is to examine the transformation of development efforts into the well- being of the society, with special reference to India. Here an attempt has been made to find complementary between Human Development Index (HDI) and Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) across major Indian states using regression analysis. The negative relationship between the two underlines the need of raising economic and educationalopportunities and their equitable distribution among all the sections of the society.