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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

#31
post #21
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.

I'm in France, healthcare is also for the illegals in the form of AME (Aide Médical de l'État).

https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F3079

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#33
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.

There has been tremendous progress in terms of available calories, malnutrition and deaths to starvation globally [0]. I'd say opaque indices and relative measures are now gaining adoption by certain parties to help conceal that fact. Of course anyone suffering hunger is tragic, but things have decidedly improved (although sadly it has plateaued in Africa since 2010).

I can't really comment on the situation in India specifically, but just for some global context around stunted development, look at a chart of men's height [1]. Not having half your population stunted by malnutrition is a recent phenomenon.

[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-height-of-men-by-...

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#34
post #28

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?

What? India has a TFR of 2.01. Population growth is over.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 amount…

Where are you getting ice from in 1500s Italy? You get an arrow pulled out of your skull, but what are you doing with the resulting infection? People bring you food from far away, but there's no refrigeration and it's hauled at 15 kilometers a day. You can pay someone a lot of money to bring avocados from 1000 kilometers away by foot today. But you won't want to eat those avocados. Get bit by the wrong mosquito? You're possibly dead from malaria, and no doctor can treat you. (People still die today, but you're much, much more likely to survive) Get syphilis? Your body is going to slowly rot away. Having a kid? Better have a few backups, because even the children of the rich dropped like flies.

Labor was cheap in the ancient world. But the reality is that machines and technology do a lot of work better than a human hand. No matter how many people you hire, nobody is cooling and preserving your food as well as a typical $500 refrigerator. And nobody is cooling your house as well as a $500 AC either. Air conditioning revolutionized the world because it made lots of places that were borderline inhabitable habitable. It doesn't matter how rich you were, life in Saudi Arabia wasn't as comfortable as it is today. Vaccination, antibiotics, windows, and AC made tropical areas much more habitable for everyone.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#36
India really needs to work on consciousness-raising regarding sanitation/cleanliness.

Modi made a start in 2014. I don't know why the momentum stopped. Some of the videos coming out of there (e.g. the recent video of the railway employee throwing a huge amount of used disposable plastic food trays off a moving train) are shocking.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#38
post #33
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.

There has been tremendous progress in terms of available calories, malnutrition and deaths to starvation globally [0]. I'd say opaque indices and relative measures are now gaining adoption by certain parties to help conceal that fact. Of course anyone suffering hunger is tragic, but things have decidedly improved (although sadly it has plateaued in Africa since 2010). I can't really comment on the situation in India…

Your first link says that it measures calories available and not calories consumed. It links to an undernourishment metric instead the world average for it has remained about the same for about a decade. I am not expert and I am probably cherry picking the page that matches my bias but I disagree that the progress has been tremendous.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#39

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.

I fail to see how diversity in the country would change those metrics.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#40

India really needs to work on consciousness-raising regarding sanitation/cleanliness. Modi made a start in 2014. I don't know why the momentum stopped. Some of the videos coming out of there (e.g. the recent video of the railway employee throwing a huge amount of used disposable plastic food trays off a moving train) are shocking.

India is on a steady path of improvement and has awareness campaigns running that adress these issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...

https://innovateindia.mygov.in/toilet-campaign/

https://siwi.org/latest/the-clean-india-mission-worlds-large...

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