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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

#201

Post by toast0 »

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 and authoritarianism can be very effective at changing the course of an organization, government, or country; once the choice is made.

What they don't always do well is make the choice to change when conditions change. There's also usually a limited bandwidth for deciding and forcing change, so you tend to end up without economic diversity and without great results in areas outside of policy.

A democratic/distributed decision making process tends towards slower changes and less alignment, but more diversity.

If you decide to be the world's production line, economic diversity may be less important. But having diversity is usually a good thing when economic tides change.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#202

Post by triceratops »

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?

> India's economy was and still is an utter failure.

It's currently an "utter failure"? I only know how to read Wikipedia, and that tells me it's the 5th largest economy in the world and currently growing faster than China. Of course it's still very poor per-capita but "utter failure" paints a very different picture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India#Data

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#203

Post by triceratops »

loeg wrote: post #34
ann_ip wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Population growth isn't quite over because people also live longer than before. But yeah the days of rapid growth are quite gone.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#204

Post by maxglute »

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.

>TW/SKR/JP

Was authoritarianism

>VNM/PRC/SIN

Is authoritarian

The TLDR is competent dictatorship and normalization (really cooperation) with hegemon (US) made rapid export led growth work. The dictator sets up the industries, the hegemon consumes the outputs. Need both, transition away from authoritarian is optional though (especially resource exporters that hegemon needs).

Democracies to my knowledge has been incapable of bootstrapping the 0-1 agrarian -> industrial development fast. I can't really think of one that didn't industrialize from exploitation/colonial phase prior to democratizing.

India hindered by being "real" democracy with universal sufferage at the outset while being very multicultural. It's... very helpful for development to culturally genocide society into relative monoculture. You want that migrant country girl from Z village to be fungible cog in factory Y, and you start that by making sure everyone can interact with language Z.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#205

Post by rayiner »

apwell23 wrote: post #114
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.

> Last year I read an article saying like 30% of children in India are stunted. We were solidly middle class in india that never went hungry. All our kids in USA now are atleast 3-4 inches taller than us. They are often taller than their parents in their mid teens.

My parents were both upper class in Bangladesh (so a rich diet in fish, meat, etc.) and I'm 3" taller than my dad (moved to US at 5) and my brother is 5" taller (born in US).

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#206

Post by aziaziazi »

anon291 wrote: post #179
lars512 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can check out a range of important development statistics on India here: https://lars.yencken.org/projects/country-explorer/india The one we're talking about today is "extreme poverty", which is the $2.15 purchasing-power-adjusted line. It's fantastic news that most Indians have surpassed this line, but it's also helpful to think of this line as just one rung in a ladder out of poverty. Life just above this line…

As someone of Indian descent, realistically speaking, Indian nutrition is going to be bad so long as the upper classes continue to moralize over it. Recently, there was a kerfuffle in Maharasthra because the state government wanted to remove eggs from the state lunch program and go lacto-vegan only. This is due to some people considering eggs unclean (like many other animal products). This sort of moralizing is extre…

While I agree morale is something for the riches (slavery ban, woman right… happens more where there’s many wealthy than when they are the exceptions), a diet-especially in a poor country- may also consider the efficiency (which some wealthy don’t give a sh*t because « they pay so they can »).

INMH the interesting questions is « what are the proteins options, considering the ressources of Indians/India? If your poultry is fed with soy you’ll have many times more proteins and other nutrients eating directly the beans instead of transforming them the eggs. However if your poultry find their food by themselves on a field, you have free eggs without input waste.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#207

Post by ZeroTalent »

I'm no expert, but I have a feeling that the poverty line is not correct.

I know this is anecdotal, but I visited nine cities in India last year (including New Delhi), and the sidewalks were full of homeless people. At night, it was literally hard to walk through some areas because people were sleeping everywhere in the streets.

I've never seen anything like that in the US or Europe.

I might have a huge blindspot.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#208

Post by throwaway7783 »

kamaal wrote: post #170
ViktorRay wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

>>It’s hard to believe today but South Korea in the 1960’s was the poorest nation on Earth. In % GDP terms S.Korea is a top spender on research, development and education. To give you a contrast in the recent Delhi elections, the party that built quality schooling for the poor was voted out. These are deep undercurrents of the Indian society. Watching a poor persons child get schooling and eventually a shot at gettin…

This is a very sweeping generalization.

The party that got voted out was mired in corruption scams and their premise to power was fighting against corruption.

Politics in India can be a lot more nuanced than you claim it to be. What you are saying is one part of the equation.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#209

Post by BobaFloutist »

gadders wrote: post #173
teitoklien wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not accepting aid. Read this : https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/india-tells-uk-we-dont-need-your-f... It’s not Indian newspaper, its british newspaper. They’ve been asking UK to stop the aid since 2008, It’s being sent out of corruption deals between UK politicians and local special interest groups who are friends with those politicians. India never asked for any of these aids. The total aid India receives is small…

Makes sense. I hope we stop that and the disguised aid by offering preferential terms on work visas etc.

>disguised aid by offering preferential terms on work visas etc. How on earth is a policy encouraging brain-drain aid??

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#210

Post by hilux »

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.

I agree.

By many reports, half of Indian homes do not have toilets.

Even if earning above some arbitrary dollar threshold, they sound uncomfortably "poor" to me.

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