India's share of population living under the national poverty line declined to 28.6 per cent in 1999-2000 from 36 per cent in 1993-94, according to the Human Development Report 2004, released by United Nations Development Programme.
The report placed India among good performing countries that were able to reduce poverty in the process of development.
"The picture that emerges from these figures is increasingly one of two very different groups of countries: those that have benefited from development, and those that have been left behind," the report said.
Other countries which figure in the list of good performers include Azerbaijan, Uganda, Jordan, Cambodia, Guatemala and Bangladesh.
Azerbaijan marked an impressive performance by reducing the number of people under the poverty line by 18.5 per cent, followed by Uganda, which was able to reduce the number of people below poverty line by 11 per cent. Bangladesh too witnessed a I.2 per cent reduction in share of population under the poverty line.
On the other hand, countries like Pakistan, Hungary, Zimbabwe and Morocco experienced an increase in the number of people under the poverty line, the Report said.
While Zimbabwe saw more than 9 per cent increase in the share of population under the poverty line, in Pakistan this increased four per cent.
Comparisons should not be made across countries because national poverty lines vary from country to country, the report said. The Human Development Report said that there was a tragic reversal in development activities, in which an unprecedented number of countries saw development activities slide backward in the 1990s.
"In 46 countries people are poorer today than in 1990. In 25 countries more people go hungry today than a decade ago," the report said.
