India demonstrated that the 'Sustainable Development Goal' target of reducing poverty by half the proportion of men, women, and children of all ages by 2030 was possible even at a large scale, UNDP said in a statement.Of the nearly 415 million people who exited poverty in India in the 15 years before the Covid-19 pandemic, roughly 275 million did so between 2005-06 and 2015-16 and another 140 million did so between 2015-16 and 2019-21, the report said.The UNDP report noted that the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on poverty in India cannot be fully assessed because 71% of the data from the 2019-2021 'Demographic and Health Survey' for the country were collected before the pandemic."Integrated policies tackling the ongoing nutritional and energy crises should be a priority," the report said, adding that the ongoing task of ending poverty for the 228.9 million poor people in 2019-2021 was daunting, especially as the number had nearly certainly risen since the data were collected.Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh, which were initially among the poorest states, reduced poverty faster in absolute terms than the national average, narrowing the poverty gap, UNDP said."