Poverty in India has been defined and measured in several different ways over the years. This report presents a unique way to measure rural poverty in Chhattisgarh using data from the Mission Antyodaya Survey of 2019. We construct a rural multidimensional deprivation index (RDI), composed of indicators in the areas of infrastructure, health and education. The index can be decomposed into its different sub-components to understand which of the indicators contribute the most to deprivation and can be analysed at different levels, starting from the block to the taluka, district and state level. From a policy and public action perspective, the RDI is extremely useful because it is composed of public provisioning of amenities at the village level. A high RDI reflects lack of access to public amenities and deprivation in villages. Because India has a decentralised structure where the Panchayats are responsible for taking governance at the grassroot levels.  Results from this report can be extremely useful to these institutions as they can identify which villages need provisioning of what amenities and act accordingly.

Editors: Sandhya Krishnan, Prasanna S, Sanket Gharat, Puja Guha, Amalendu Jyotishi, and Neeraj Hatekar.