NITI Aayog and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) jointly hosted a national workshop on the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) in New Delhi on September 9, 2025, with representatives from 30 states and Union Territories. NITI Aayog Vice Chairperson Suman K. Bery presided over the event, emphasising that state-level MPI capacity building is central to India's goal of lifting 25 million people out of multidimensional poverty by 2030. The workshop was developed in collaboration with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), the academic body that co-developed the global MPI methodology with UNDP. India's National MPI, launched in 2021, measures poverty across three dimensions — health, education, and living standards — using 12 indicators including nutrition, child mortality, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, and assets. According to the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) data, India's MPI value dropped from 0.117 to 0.066 between 2015-16 and 2019-21, lifting approximately 135 million people out of multidimensional poverty. The workshop focused on strengthening state-level data collection, developing disaggregated MPI estimates for districts and demographic groups, and aligning state poverty-reduction plans with SDG 1 (No Poverty). UNDP India Country Representative highlighted that granular district-level MPI data enables targeted interventions in the most deprived pockets, while OPHI experts shared best practices from 100+ countries using the MPI framework.