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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

#91

Post by kamaal »

ViktorRay wrote: post #51
profsummergig wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent Delhi election, I was watching videos of some of the slums. There were literal hills of rotting organic garbage inside the slums. With children living next to them. I had visions of Paul Ehrlich freaking out at the sight of people defecating and bathing on the roadside in Delhi. I saw photos of some of the "mohalla clinics" (free basic healthcare clinics) that the previous Delhi government had (admittedly…

One issue is the unfortunate deep level of corruption in Indian society. If people create many waste management companies and people tried to invest in them then some people would just create fake companies and simply steal the money. There’s no trust. Or at least that’s the way it used to be decades prior. Your suggestion nowadays might actually work because the Indian government has now identification measures for…

>>One issue is the unfortunate deep level of corruption in Indian society.

Blame every thing on "Corruption". This is such cope.

All you have to do is ensure you do your part in keeping things around you clean. You can ghost walk streets in the poorest places in Mexico and they look affluent compared to even posh neighbourhoods in India.

Lets call it as it is, We Indians need to seriously address our cultural tendencies. Im not just talking about some immediate sense of urgency. But how we go about living our every day life. Unless you address this at a core level, and create a proactive sense of awareness about hygiene in people this isn't going to change.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#92

Post by jorvi »

juujian wrote: post #90
numpad0 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like bit of column one and column two. On one hand, poverty by income in USD must assume that the world's economy had globalized enough, such that, there can be no such locations on Earth as where $0.01 pays Michelin star lunch for dozen healthy adults. That's going to completely break premises of this metric. On the other hand, it's probably useful enough for now. Maybe there are 100x differences between…

I always had to think of my grandparents when discussing GDP. Aside from being very much part of the regular economy, they were also quite self sufficient. When my grandmother died, we found rows and rows of bottled jam. Some decades old according to the labels. My aunt did the taste test, and according to that at least, they were still very much edible and yummy actually. To the GDP that whole side of life is invisi…

> My aunt did the taste test, and according to that at least, they were still very much edible and yummy actually.

Sugar is a preservative just like salt, and fruit jams were developed specifically as a way to preserve more of a fruit harvest.

Honey is an example of a sugary product that is extremely stable. There's honey that has been recovered from Egyptian tombs and is still considered edible.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#93

Post by thworp »

ksynwa wrote: post #38
thworp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but I disagree that the progress has been tremendous.

There really is no argument that it hasn't. If we take a year between 1950 and 1970 as a baseline, there was a significant reduction in chronic malnutrition and the number and severity of famines -- both in absolute numbers as well as per capita.

> it has remained about the same for about a decade

If your time horizon is the last 10 years then the picture is more mixed, yea.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#94

Post by inglor_cz »

dartharva wrote: post #60
navigate8310 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that's ingrained in the culture to live besides the filth and romanticize poverty.

Disgustingly racist comment.

How do you explain the differences across South Asia by anything else than cultural attitudes towards cleanliness and dirt?

Singapore is very clean. Malaysia is fairly clean. Cambodia sort of. India and Philippines very much not.

And Zoroastrians are absolutely meticulous about cleanliness, be they poor or rich.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#95

Post by HPsquared »

juujian wrote: post #90
numpad0 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like bit of column one and column two. On one hand, poverty by income in USD must assume that the world's economy had globalized enough, such that, there can be no such locations on Earth as where $0.01 pays Michelin star lunch for dozen healthy adults. That's going to completely break premises of this metric. On the other hand, it's probably useful enough for now. Maybe there are 100x differences between…

I always had to think of my grandparents when discussing GDP. Aside from being very much part of the regular economy, they were also quite self sufficient. When my grandmother died, we found rows and rows of bottled jam. Some decades old according to the labels. My aunt did the taste test, and according to that at least, they were still very much edible and yummy actually. To the GDP that whole side of life is invisi…

Also: anything relating to home cooking, exercise, self-care, relationships and caring for children and other relatives. Only "paid professional" services are counted which are often much worse quality than the organic untaxed real thing.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#96

Post by Cthulhu_ »

profsummergig wrote: post #55
navigate8310 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that's ingrained in the culture to live besides the filth and romanticize poverty.

There was a recent scandal involving someone spitting paan/chewing tobacco on the floor inside one of the state assemblies. A video I watched of a brand spanking new metro station in Mumbai. Marble floors and all. And a commenter pointed out a timestamp where you can see paan/chewing tobacco spit in a corner of the floor. Here's what baffles me. It is well established that Indians chew paan/chewing tobacco. It is wel…

Better yet would be to ban the practice entirely; spittoons in the US (think generic wild west saloons) were a major source of spreading diseases like tuberculosis. They (and chewing tobacco) went out of fashion in the '30's due to shifting perceptions of hygiene, and both chewing gum and cigarettes becoming the more favorable options. I'm not sure how much campaigning was done to achieve that though.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#97

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ViktorRay wrote: post #53

China and India had similar levels of poverty 50 years ago. How come China today is so different from India today? In terms of cleanliness and poverty elimination specifically. I know China liberalized in the 80’s and India in the 90’s. So you could say that’s a 10 year difference. But China 10 years ago was still very different from India even today. Does anyone have any ideas?

Theory (I live half a world away though): totalitarianism. China has a very strong and top-down government, where if the leadership decides for example that streets should be clean, millions of government officials make it happen. I don't know if that is just good organization or if it's backed by e.g. legal repercussions if it's not done right though.

But of course it's got major downsides, as the Chinese government is also pushing hard to remove distinct cultural identities from the various regions of China. India is still much richer in terms of cultures than that, the government can't just come in and start erasing that.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#98

Post by Pannoniae »

juujian wrote: post #90
numpad0 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like bit of column one and column two. On one hand, poverty by income in USD must assume that the world's economy had globalized enough, such that, there can be no such locations on Earth as where $0.01 pays Michelin star lunch for dozen healthy adults. That's going to completely break premises of this metric. On the other hand, it's probably useful enough for now. Maybe there are 100x differences between…

I always had to think of my grandparents when discussing GDP. Aside from being very much part of the regular economy, they were also quite self sufficient. When my grandmother died, we found rows and rows of bottled jam. Some decades old according to the labels. My aunt did the taste test, and according to that at least, they were still very much edible and yummy actually. To the GDP that whole side of life is invisi…

Nah it's not a WW2 thing. Not sure about Western Europe but in Central/Eastern Europe, especially in rural areas, people still have chambers and basements full of jam, compote and basically anything else which can be preserved. Not one or two jars but enough to last several years, that kind of stuff.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#99

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ann_ip wrote: post #28
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?

> what are the next steps?

I'd say huge investments in improving things like infrastructure (roads, water, sewage, electricity), quality of housing, etc. China has a lot of experience in this regard with huge, admittedly failed projects of building entire cities from scratch (failed because nobody actually lives there).

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#100

Post by gruez »

numpad0 wrote: post #75
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.

This sounds like bit of column one and column two. On one hand, poverty by income in USD must assume that the world's economy had globalized enough, such that, there can be no such locations on Earth as where $0.01 pays Michelin star lunch for dozen healthy adults. That's going to completely break premises of this metric. On the other hand, it's probably useful enough for now. Maybe there are 100x differences between…

>This sounds like bit of column one and column two. On one hand, poverty by income in USD must assume that the world's economy had globalized enough, such that, there can be no such locations on Earth as where $0.01 pays Michelin star lunch for dozen healthy adults. That's going to completely break premises of this metric.

Poverty levels are measured with PPP dollars, so that's already factored in.

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