“In Bangladesh, the initial reductions in poverty at the beginning of the 1990s were offset by increases in all three types of poverty during the middle of the 1990s. However, all poverty rates have fallen since the end of the 1990s. In India, the medial poor fared better than the subjacent poor and the ultra poor (marginally),” says the report.

The report also goes to explore the connection between poverty and hunger. Because undernourished people are less productive and child malnutrition has severe and permanent consequences for physical and intellectual development, poverty and hunger can become entwined in a vicious cycle.

Previous work by economists has shown that India’s malnutrition has a lot to do with the status of women in society. Despite the remarkable improvement in child malnutrition in South Asia, the region still has the highest prevalence of underweight in children in the world.

“The need of the hour was to look at community-based interventions rather than individual ones. Working with men, community programmes could be a way out to deal with this logjam,” said Ahmed.

It is not just welfare schemes but interventions like those that aim to address exclusion of groups, child malnutrition, lack of education and low assets are essential to help the poorest find an exit route from poverty.