The scepticism of the economists in using multidimensional indices in development planning can be traced back to the Impossibility Theorem of Kenneth J. Arrow which stipulates that ranking of alternatives—economic or geographic states—reflecting the collective preference of any group, based on the rankings of the individual members of the group, would inevitably violate basic principles of rationality or axioms. By this logic, ranking of countries, states, districts or political regimes by employing a number of indicators would be theoretically untenable. This academic purity of social scientists—forcing them to be non-judgmental in many situations demanding immediate intervention—has been questioned by Amartya Sen and Mahbub ul Haq as they have ventured into ranking countries based on their levels of human development. One can see a number of national and global organisations now coming out with multi-dimensional indices, a very important one being the multidimensional poverty index (MPI), brought out annually by UNDP in collaboration with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) as a part of the Human Development Report. Several regional authorities and national governments have gone ahead and constructed an MPI at national, state and sub-state level, India being no exception.