Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 242 posts

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#141

Post by david38 »

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 shows you don’t know what extreme poverty is and how horrible it is.

What-about-ism is an elitist way to pretend to care yet do nothing.

Imagine it was your country and your project which eliminated extreme poverty. No doubt you would be bending over backwards to listen to someone who “read an article” on the other side of the world

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#142

Post by renewiltord »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #97
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…

But that doesn’t explain Taiwan. Even Vietnam is nicer than India.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#143

Post by ViktorRay »

okucu wrote: post #115
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?

You can read professor Vivek Chibbers book "locked in place". I highly recommend it (any book of his actually). It's an account of why India's economy was and still is an utter failure. China also didn't succeed due to "liberalization". How come the absolute majority of capitalist economies in the world (Latin/South America, Africa, Asia etc.) are still dirt poor then?

It’s hard to believe today but South Korea in the 1960’s was the poorest nation on Earth. Far poorer than even China.

In the post World War II era, Singapore was also deeply impoverished and wrecked by the legacy of war and colonialism. Hong Kong as well. Taiwan was poor too. Japan was decimated by the war.

All these countries ended up becoming wealthy and prosperous due to liberalization and capitalism. South Korea, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan. These places are all wealthy today.

Of course liberalization and capitalism was not the only factor. I don’t know much about the Latin American economies but I will take your word for them in terms of being poor. And India has many issues too.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about recently. It’s interesting to see what people say.

Also thank you for the book recommendation.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#144

Post by alephnerd »

slothtrop wrote: post #136
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?

Check this out: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-how-asia-works The odd one out in this assessment is India, because it did some similar things (land reform) without success. A difference might be that India sheltered businesses from foreign competition and didn't encourage and invest as much. Another, is that you need caste connections to do business. Culturally I intuit that the upper-castes that contro…

India has similar barriers for foreign manufacturing businesses to enter as those that China has.

And the caste aspect doesn't make sense, as caste is hyperlocal and there isn't solidarity between caste groups of different ethnicities. Furthermore, caste ranking doesn't fully translate to business ownership, as traditionally, merchant and moneylending castes like Banias were towards the lower end.

The main difference between China and India is China makes it's urban centers de facto independent of rural hinterlands within the same prefecture, while in India, urban and rural are both under the same state government.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#145

Post by tim333 »

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.

If you want to reduce poverty it's handy to have some metrics. Obviously it's a simplification of reality but you can't really track all 8bn people individually to see how they are doing.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#146

Post by righthand »

renewiltord wrote: post #142
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But that doesn’t explain Taiwan. Even Vietnam is nicer than India.

Taiwan isn’t China.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#147

Post by righthand »

profsummergig wrote: post #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.

Minor nitpick, there’s no such thing as disposable plastic.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#148

Post by alephnerd »

renewiltord wrote: post #142
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But that doesn’t explain Taiwan. Even Vietnam is nicer than India.

Taiwan was authoritarian until the 1990s-2000s.

And Vietnam isn't that much better than India (I travel to both 3-4 times a year because of family).

If you're in D1 or D3 of HCMC maybe, but that's not where the majority of Saigon residents live - they mostly live in D10, D8, or D4 which don't look much different from similar neighborhoods in most of Urban India.

And once you go to rural Vietnam, I've noticed the quality of life is worse than those in the villages my extended family lives in back in India, because most spending is basically given to a handful of cities.

My wife's ancestral village in VN has dirt roads, a single primary school, and no doctor, and social services such as direct welfare transfers are nonexistent. On the other hand, my ancestral village in North India has a wind turbine factory, an electric battery factory, and farmers and residents get around $50-150/mo in direct benefits transfer.

A "China" or "South Korea" model doesn't make sense for a democracy like India (or even Indonesia or Phillipines, which share similar issues). A "Turkiye" or "Israel" model makes more sense for these kinds of countries.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#149

Post by ImJamal »

HPsquared wrote: post #135
okr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. So you would say, if someone has a talent for cooking, specializes himself, becomes a professional, paid by people who enjoy the food, you would be at least sceptical, when it comes to quality? I see paint jobs by people done by themselves. And compare it with paid professional servers. The pendulum always swings to professional. :)

If that person makes a home-cooked meal for their family, no doubt adding value to the world, the value added is not counted towards GDP. Only the "money (or something else taxable) changing hands" transactions are counted.

Most people who make homecooked meals will buy food from a store so it will show up, just indirectly.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#150

Post by ViktorRay »

kamaal wrote: post #91
ViktorRay wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tendenc…

It sounds like you are trying to argue with what I said.

But…I think what you said doesn’t really contradict what I said. I actually agree with what you are saying about cultural tendencies.

Post reply on HN