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India is home to over 340 million destitute people and is the second poorest country in South Asia after strife-torn Afghanistan, says a poverty estimation study by Oxford University, UK.Forty per cent of all poor in 49 countries live in India, mostly in rural areas, according to the Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2014, a tool used by Oxford researchers to measure poverty. The researchers classified one-half of all the poor in 49 countries as destitute by using MPI 2014, which identified a person as ‘multi-dimensionally poor’ if he or she is deprived in one-third or more of 10 indicators, such as severe malnutrition, losing two children, and defecating in open. In South Asia, Afghanistan had the highest level of destitution at 38 per cent, followed by India at a ‘troubling’ 28.5 per cent. Interestingly, India’s immediate neighbours Bangladesh and Pakistan had much lower levels of destitution at 17.2 per cent and 20.7 per cent respectively. The study placed Afghanistan as the poorest country in South Asia, with 66 per cent (based on 2010-11 data) of its people being MPI poor, followed by India with 54 per cent (2005-06), Bangladesh (2011) with 51 per cent, Pakistan (2012-13) and Nepal (2011) at 44 per cent, Bhutan at 27 per cent, and Sri Lanka and the Maldives at 5 per cent.