42%, 28% or 6%...How Many Indians Are Really Poor? ; Estimates of the Number of Poor Living in India Vary so Widely That They Raise a Very Fundamental Question Who Is the Real Poor?

Summary

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The good news first if you earned $1.01 a day back in 1981, you are now counted among the world's elite poor, thanks to the raising of the minimum subsistence level by the World Bank to $1.25 from the earlier $1 a day. The bad news: news doesn't cook food. Based on the World Bank's revised estimates, the number of poor in the developing world in 1981 is or rather was a little over 1.9 billion as against the earlier estimates of 1.53 billion. This number has now come down to 1.4 billion in 2005, though it has risen against the earlier estimate based on the $1 a day threshold level of 879 million.

The Indian news is not too happy either in absolute numbers, India, in 2005, had 455.8 million people living on less than $1.25 a day vis-a-vis 420.5 million in 1981, which makes us worse-off than even Sub-Saharan Africa, whose figures for 2005 are 384.2 million. However, according to the $1 a day mark, the numbers have actually reduced from 296.1 million in 1981 to 266.5 million in 2005.

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42%, 28% or 6%...How Many Indians Are Really Poor? ; Estimates of the Number of Poor Living in India Vary so Widely That They Raise a Very Fundamental Question Who Is the Real Poor?

So, are we getting poorer by the day, even after 17 years of economic reforms? Hogwash, is what Surjit S...

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