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Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

economist.com

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Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#21

Post by ahoka »

copx wrote: post #17
codethief wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free housing & food? Which country is that?

The UK is infamous for housing illegal immigrants in hotels, and they don't just get free food but free money, too. Oh, and free healthcare. Free money, housing, and healthcare for everyone is also the law here in Germany, which is why we get flooded by illegal immigrants too.. ..and that's why these Western European welfare states are collapsing. You can only afford something like this if your population overwhelmin…

Maybe read and spread less Russian propaganda. Illegal immigrants never get anything in EU, other than Schengen entry bans.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#22

Post by milesrout »

ksynwa wrote: post #5

I don't understand the significant of metrics like the international poverty line. Seems like the only point of its existence is to create a sense of progress or maybe exaggerate it. They never account for basic stuff like how many calories people get to eat, let alone the quality of nutrition. Last year I read an article saying like 30% of children in India are stunted.

The point is to get a sense of progress or not. It only creates a sense of progress if there actually is some.

The alternative is the silly measures of "poverty" we use in the first world which are mathematically unachieveable by design so they can always be used to justify measures politicians want to pass: "won't you think of the child poverty you heartless monster" etc.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#23

Post by aprilthird2021 »

anshumankmr wrote: post #9

Even if it is neglible, it is still millions of people. Plus if industrial miracle, so to say, had been allowed to happen, this might have happened much sooner. And this country is yet to deal with the massive impact that potential impacts that AI could have on it econcomy.

I do think labor in India will be cheaper than using any AI for quite some time longer than in the West.

I also worry that the major negative effects of AI in India will not be economic but will be social as the society is extremely low trust at the moment due to widespread corruption, criminals being lauded by the government, killings of journalists, communal tensions, huge pollution, and tons of other problems.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#24

Post by milesrout »

sureIy wrote: post #14
roenxi wrote: post #12

The article is interesting, the headline is baffling. It seems to be claiming that it is possible to pay Indians a medium-single-figure daily wage (ie, $1,000/year) despite having 40% of the country working in the agricultural industry. Great but that myth is and was of no real interest to anyone and isn't a very useful frame for the article. India still needs to move most of the population on to doing something more…

> inefficiently looking after plants Might be a better life than smelling exhaust gas and looking at screens for 3/4 of our existence. Then wake up and worry about AI eventually eating our jobs.

By the time most of India is at the level of development that their problem is looking at screens, the cars will be battery-electric.

AI has as much chance of taking your job as combine harvesters have of taking everyone's job that currently has one in India working on farms: 99%, maybe, but also 0%.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#25

Post by milesrout »

ahoka wrote: post #21
copx wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is infamous for housing illegal immigrants in hotels, and they don't just get free food but free money, too. Oh, and free healthcare. Free money, housing, and healthcare for everyone is also the law here in Germany, which is why we get flooded by illegal immigrants too.. ..and that's why these Western European welfare states are collapsing. You can only afford something like this if your population overwhelmin…

Maybe read and spread less Russian propaganda. Illegal immigrants never get anything in EU, other than Schengen entry bans.

Illegal migrants that claim asylum in Germany and Sweden have never got any public services, housing or other support?

Really, that is your position?!

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#26

Post by aprilthird2021 »

forgotoldacc wrote: post #15
Elixir6419 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty perception is relative. Most people judge their position on the poor/rich scale based on their sorroundings, rather than in absolute value. Also to the point on raising the bar. I think that is not a bad thing.

This is the key point. We can look back on people who were royalty in their time, but by modern standards, they would've been living a poor life. No AC in the summer, no proper medical care and the possibility of dying from a mild tooth problem, only having access to food that's in-season, zero running water, needing to have your poop hauled away in buckets, needing to spend all day just to travel 15 km, being blamed…

> No AC in the summer, no proper medical care and the possibility of dying from a mild tooth problem, only having access to food that's in-season, zero running water, needing to have your poop hauled away in buckets, needing to spend all day just to travel 15 km, being blamed for a random crime and executed days later with no real evidence.

I think this is greatly exaggerated. Actual royalty had access to vast amounts of physical and mental labor that only the billionaires of modern society could rival.

No A/C? You can pay people to bring ice into your house and cool you. No medical care? You could have a surgeon invent an implement to pull an arrow out of your skull and save your life, just because you are important enough for that. Only food in season? You could pay people to bring you food from other places far away lands no one has ever seen in such seasons.

Modern world has conveniences, but so many people cannot afford any labor at all. Royalty had leisure time that most modern people can barely afford.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#27

Post by ithkuil »

Elixir6419 wrote: post #7
foxglacier wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I admit to not having been able to read the article, this is very true. In my country, everyone has access to free healthcare, housing, food, and even tertiary education for most people, especially the poorest. But there are still endless complaints about poverty. Sometimes a person will have to live in a (free) hotel because all the immediately available free housing is in another city where they don't want to…

Poverty perception is relative. Most people judge their position on the poor/rich scale based on their sorroundings, rather than in absolute value. Also to the point on raising the bar. I think that is not a bad thing.

Raising the bar is good but there are people who will exploit the feelings of people who perceive to be disenfranchised (and will cherry-pick some aspects where they are really worse off now compared to the past) and they will inflate their anger and may lead to destroying the actual progress that has been made.

This can happen with the best of intentions too.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#28

Post by ann_ip »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #18

But the real question is: what comes next? Just clearing the $2.15 threshold isn't enough—there's still a long road to real economic security

Exactly what I was thinking. With population not slowing down anytime soon, what are the next steps?

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#29

Post by aylmao »

milesrout wrote: post #22
ksynwa wrote: post #5

I don't understand the significant of metrics like the international poverty line. Seems like the only point of its existence is to create a sense of progress or maybe exaggerate it. They never account for basic stuff like how many calories people get to eat, let alone the quality of nutrition. Last year I read an article saying like 30% of children in India are stunted.

The point is to get a sense of progress or not. It only creates a sense of progress if there actually is some. The alternative is the silly measures of "poverty" we use in the first world which are mathematically unachieveable by design so they can always be used to justify measures politicians want to pass: "won't you think of the child poverty you heartless monster" etc.

> The alternative is the silly measures of "poverty" we use in the first world which are mathematically unachievable by design so they can always be used to justify measures politicians want to pass: "won't you think of the child poverty you heartless monster" etc.

No, I disagree. The alternative, as the original comment said, is to measure access to calories, nutrition, or other metrics like prevalence of starvation, access to shelter, access to sanitation, prevalence of certain health issues, etc.

Measuring poverty via the international poverty line has often been criticized [1][2][3].

[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337335330_A_critiqu...

[2]: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-i...

[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/8/21/exposing-the-gr...

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#30

Post by ta20240528 »

andsoitis wrote: post #10

Counter balance: “According to the 2023 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 111th out of 125 countries, with a score of 28.7, indicating a “serious” level of hunger. Although this is a slight improvement from its 2015 score of 29.2, the progress has been slow compared to countries with similar economic growth rates. India also has the highest child wasting rate in the world at 18.7%. And 35.5% of children under five are…

Three significant figures for a somewhat rough measurement of poverty over a sample of a population as diverse as India should have one's BS alarms blaring.

Actually both 28,7 and 29,2 = 30.

Social workers playing at science.

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