With 51.91 percent of the population classified as poor, NITI Aayog, the Indian government's public policy think tank, has declared Bihar to be the poorest state in the country.
The think tank has just published its first Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which has also detected alarming rates of poverty in Jharkhand (42.16 percent), Uttar Pradesh (37.79 percent), and Madhya Pradesh (36.6 percent).
The MPI was also measuring such categories as Health, Maternal care, Education, and Standard of Living, in all of which Bihar ranked lowest. After the ratings were announced on Friday, former state chief of Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, lashed out at the present chief Nitish Kumar, and said that he should be ashamed of the state's "poor" rating.
"The NITI Aayog report says Bihar is lagging behind in everything from education to health. [The lawmakers] chant slogans of development but now this report has come. Nitish Kumar should drown himself and die of shame," Yadav said on Friday, according to news agency ANI.
The report also highlights Bihar as having the highest number of malnourished people - followed by Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
The Indian think tank said in its report that the MPI was collated using the country's National Family Health Survey 2015-16.
Considered the most widely used poverty index not to take account of money, multidimensional poverty indices have been used by the United Nations Development Programme in its flagship Human Development Report since 2010.