Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels • Hacker News Board

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#181

Post by allemagne » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 4:11 PM UTC

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 was liberalization in addition to strong and relatively benevolent enforcement of the market.

Just allowing the existence of private enterprise doesn't mean much when institutions are weak or corrupt. If you know everyone isn't playing by the rules, the most you can accomplish is rent-seeking while everyone tries to make each other suckers.

If all you have is a strong ML-style government and no liberalization, however, then there's not much of a point in finding opportunities to invest because everything you have is at the mercy of the Party.

China succeeded because investors gambled correctly that liberalization would be accompanied by credible governance, and it can all go away if and when the credibility for investors and entrepreneurs is replaced by Xi's neo-Maoism.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#182

Post by Yeul » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #87

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.

>>I don't know why the momentum stopped. There was no momentum. People never started, it was more of a marketing campaign. Almost everyday I see people throw garbage around street corners, if you ask them not to, they gang up and go after you like its their birth right to be dirty and you are being evil by keeping clean. You need to tear down the whole shebang and rebuild it from scratch, much of this also about inco…

I'm someone who tends to keep to themselves but even I notice it when there are trash bags left behind by some asshole.

Considering the lower wages it shouldn't be that expensive for an Indian city to hire some garbage collectors?

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#183

Post by mistrial9 » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 4:14 PM UTC

matkoniecz wrote: post #123

HPsquared wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It depends on estimates. I have seen estimates which included all that and also things like illegal prostitution in services category. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/business/worldbusiness/27... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/30/nicholaswatt.m... > The revised GDP will include some money from illegal activities, such as money from cigarette and drinks smuggling, prostitution and money laundering. (Gre…

ok but "untaxed non-monetary things part of a wholesome life" and "black market money exchange" are very different topics

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#184

Post by Yeul » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 4:14 PM UTC

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?

Civic pride? It seems to me that Chinese really are motivated to see their country do better.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#185

Post by noja » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 4:14 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #145

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.

Sure you can. But it costs more.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#186

Post by insane_dreamer » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 4:24 PM UTC

lupusreal wrote: post #63

clarionbell wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is much harder to report on problems in China than in India for one.

There's no shortage of industrial and traffic accident videos coming out of China, very often showcasing horrendous working conditions and absolutely depraved levels of apathy from onlookers, which is to say that China isn't very good at suppressing videos that make them look bad. But in all of these videos, China looks 1000x more clean than India. Am I to believe that the Chinese government cares more about suppress…

> China isn't very good at suppressing videos that make them look bad

they are extremely good at suppressing such videos internally

they will sometimes allow something like the particular video you mention (I was living in China when that video went viral, this was about 10 years ago) because it directs anger at individuals' bad behavior, not at the government (in fact, in favors the government making and enforcing rules to disallow bad citizen behavior)

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#187

Post by gosub100 » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 4:29 PM UTC

okr wrote: post #110

HPsquared wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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. :)

For babysitting it's obviously better for the children to be with their family instead of "cared for" by the first stranger that accepts the lowest wage.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#188

Post by insane_dreamer » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 4:30 PM UTC

em500 wrote: post #157

kentrado wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has central planning.

But I thought central planning was bad for economic development. Or was that authoritarianism?

Central planning is very good for pulling a country out of an a poorly developed state into a highly developed state. The USSR experience this under Stalin (setting aside that he was a mass murderer) which created an industrial power. Even in the US, during WW2 the industry was centrally planned and that pulled the US out of the Great Depression.

However, central planning as proven to be bad once you reach a developed state. Lots of reasons for this which would be too long to get into here, but has a lot to do with people willing to follow a sacrifice when there is a crisis or the country is working together to get itself out of a bad situation.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#189

Post by insane_dreamer » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 4:36 PM UTC

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?

China very specifically and deliberately set out to build up its export capability in a way that was highly centralized and consolidated (specifically around the Yangtze Delta), whereby entire supply chains were located next to each, lowering the cost of production and making it difficult for other countries to compete even if they had lower wages. This was not by accident.

The other advantage China has was continuity of government economic policies because you had pretty much the same people in charge for a couple of decades which gave time for the policies to take root.

Of course China is a totalitarian police state, and not a place I'd want to be (I did live there for some years). But people put up with that because of the hyper economic growth in the 80s-00s; it's hard to think about freedoms and human rights if you can't even feed your family. Once people reach a state where they have their basic needs met then they begin to value other things (like individual freedoms).

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#190

Post by keeda » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 4:36 PM UTC

dartharva wrote: post #137

gadders wrote: post #69

[flagged]

India's government doesn't accept aid, so whatever "aid" is being sent is to shady institutions anyway. Stopping this "aid" will only net the country a positive impact.

That's a strange claim. A quick Google will provide all kinds of data on the aid being sent to India from multiple countries. The recent "USAID kerfuffle" also surfaced all the instances of the current government accepting USAID funding, e.g. https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/02/22/before-bjps-usaid-out...

But in case you think it's going to "shady institutions" please be aware that the government instituted the FCRA to have complete control over where the money goes: https://kajalbasu.substack.com/p/usaid-and-the-modi-governme...

Something not talked about much in the press is how much FCRA has hurt NGOs and non-profits operating in India. From personal experience: I tried to get my US-based employer to match my donation to a local non-profit in India, which didn't work out because FCRA regulations basically made it a non-starter.