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Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

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Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 poult…

Eggs are an outstanding source of protein, culturally well-known, easy to transport, cook, etc.

I think your theoretical argument is - "what if instead of eggs we could feed hungry people with all the soy used to feed those chicken to produce those eggs?" You and I both know that's not going to happen.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#212
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.

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…

Some of these graphs are highly inaccurate due to how the government skews employment data. For example, the government counts jobless people as "employed" if they return to their villages from cities due to lack of employment and occasionally help on family farms.

Agricultural employment has actually increased post covid [1][2]:

2018-2019: 42.5%

2022-2023: 45.8%

This isn't because the number of farms is growing, but because more people are working on the same farms due to lack of jobs elsewhere. This casts doubt on the overall poverty reduction narrative.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS?location...

https://dge.gov.in/dge/sites/default/files/2024-02/Employmen...

https://thewire.in/economy/share-of-agriculture-in-employmen...

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is it that hard to find? This[1] took me one search on YouTube. I agree that India is filthy, but it's not hard to find such videos for China either. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hEJKOD1ux14

Do these look the same level of filthy to you? This is the capital city New Delhi (Yamuna River, which is worshipped):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83t0hdJG8AI

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 poult…

> 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.

Just completely and utterly false, and reflects the poor understanding of diet and nutrition that is pervasive throughout India and in Indian culture. There's a reason why Indians have the highest rates of metabolic syndrome. I've basically shirked all of it, and my blood numbers, weight, etc are substantially better than my parents and my brother.

Firstly, chickens eat more than soy, and chickens (and animals in general) can turn undigestible, useless biomatter into actual food (such as ruminants digesting grass, and then humans drinking milk or eating the flesh). Using animals, you are able to use much less bio-matter to get an equivalent amount of calories and nutrition, simply because humans are terrible at digesting.

That being said, on to eggs. Eggs are an excellent source for protein and orders of magnitude better than soy when looking at both the amino acid profile as well as the protein / calories.

One hard-boiled egg contains about 70 calories and 6 g protein.

Meanwhile, you'd need 50g boiled soybeans to get 6g protein. However, Soy is less bio-available (about 90%), so you'd actually need to eat about 6.6 g protein or 60 g soybean, containing about 70 calories. So far so good, right?

Wrong. Because soy beans are low in essential amino acids like methionine. For an average adult you need about 1.3g methionine / day. This is 3 eggs or 210 calories.

Meanwhile, you need about 480 g of soybean to meet your methionine requirement, which is 830 calories.

If you analyze the Indian diet, you'll realize it's replete with these sorts of insane substitutions, where a perfectly good source of nutrition, whose protein profile matches exactly the human requirement, is substituted for a sub-par product. Obviously, since these are requirements, you'll see Indians compensate by simply eating more to make up for the deficiency. But eating these vegetarian sources of protein in the right amount to get to the required intake leads to insanely high calorie numbers, which is why diabetes, stomach fat, heart problems, etc are so prevalent in India. And it's also why Indians in India are shorter than the Indians in the diaspora despite Indians in India actually eating more calories (hence the weight).

And that's just calories and basic metabolism, we're not even talking body composition, which again suffers within India simply because the best sources of protein are eschewed due to moralizing. There's a reason why Indians, despite constituting 25% of the planet, do not constitute a large portion of world-class athletes and have low average rates of grip strength. It's an insanely self-inflicted pathology.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#215

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 really needs to work on consciousness-raising regarding sanitation/cleanliness. And women harassment. Maybe that should be the top1 priority.

And that too. Bollywood movies are said to include r*pe scenes to increase sales. It's really sad.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>moralizing over diet Interesting. There's seems to be some fuckery with Indian hunger data, i.e. malnourishment, stuntness have stalled at a relatively high level 10 years ago and even occasionally gets worse. Which kind of makes sense if one realizes India added 400 million mouths in last 20 years, and distribution is an issue. I remember also news a few years ago Indian average height decreasing, all proxy indicat…

I honestly think most Indians eat too many calories, not too little. It's just trash nutritionally speaking, and deficient in protein, which is a large determinant of height. It's cultural

> It's a... different development trajectory.

My two cents: the rest of the world is highly westernized. If you consider Islam a western religion (which you should, since it's a derivative of Judaism, and is a cousin to Christianity), then basically all of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa was westernized with the Islamic conquests. Sub Saharan Africa has adopted western norms wholesale after colonization (no written language, so very hard to keep old customs). Later, China adopted communism (a western ideology), which made its way into parts of Korea and Southeast Asia, and Japan / Philippines were colonized by force. India actually stands out as never having undergone much of a western colonization. Obviously, the entirety of the Americas are the result of Spanish/British/etc colonization.

India stands out as the only country to have never been properly colonized, with a long written record. A lot of economic theories we have are really not universal truths, but things that only hold true in the global monoculture. That's why India's development trajectory is so different, and why states like Kerala basically defy all expectations (even if it's 'communist', it's 'communist' in a non-'communist' federal framework).

Again... my highly controversial opinion. I don't really pay a whole lot of attention, but this is my take.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#217

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 has more and better human capital than India.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#218
This is wonderful news and a framework for other countries to accomplish the same. I sensed the US’ “peacekeeping” role (I know, I know) and foreign aid spending has helped much of the global south reduce extreme poverty since the 80s. That doesn’t mean people’s lives are especially comfortable but it’s an upgrade. I think historically that will be US’ largest impact, and we are unlikely to accomplish anything as significant again. I don’t mean to imply US always did a respectable or honorable job in this role (I didn’t forget what the ford and Rockefeller foundations did)

Now that the US seems intent on burning every international aid project we have, I hope other countries can help fill the gap and help lift other poor countries a little higher. It seems like a reasonable thing to do.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#219
post #131

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 wouldn't say the momentum has stopped. Anecdote alert: I travel to India at least once in a year and I have to take the train each time (sleeper class) and I can definitely attest that things have significantly improved since I was a kid. I have been taking these same trains for over 25 years now. For starters the toilets actually don't dump directly between the tracks. The railway employees seem to be quite happy…

>>For starters the toilets actually don't dump directly between the tracks.

That's still there :)

You don't cross(on a two wheeler) below a bridge on which a train is passing for the obvious reasons(Golden shower).

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#220
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China today is so different from India today? In terms of cleanliness Urban Goverment in China versus India is VERY different. In China, cities are given significant autonomy and a bigger pot of cash compared to prefecture they are in. Furthermore, the Chinese cities that most foreigners visit (Beijing, Shanghai) are under direct control of the Central Government. In India, urban government is subservient to state…

>>urban Bangalore only has around 20 seats in Karnataka's Legislative Assembly out of 224 total. This means that state governments have little to no incentive to care about providing urban services and goods, when they can better invest in other constituencies that actually can flip the tide in elections. That is because citizens themselves don't care. Single biggest motivation of the Indian voter base is using the p…

> That is because citizens themselves don't care.

This isn't about citizens. Fundamentally, residents in a mega-city like Bangalore simply do not matter in a parliamentary democracy like Karnataka. Bangalore doesn't make you CM, so there's no incentive for Karnataka's politicians to invest in it.

> Every time a political party

Urban management is not about political party - it's about bureaucracy. INC, BJP, JDS, etc can win elections, but local government such as public works are apolitical. The issue is states in India do NOT devolve planning commissions to local government - just about every function that a city would have (Zoning, Permitting, Land Acquisition) are managed by state level planning commissions. India is unique in the level of centralization that state level governments have.

> Quite the opposite, every city in Karnataka

Karnataka is not the rest of India. Bangalore is notoriously bad at urban planning and management. The fact that much poorer Indore can outcompete Bangalore in cleanliness and urban management is a testament to the fact that it's about local government.

Also, ime, Delhi NCR (not just Delhi and Noida but also ancillary towns like Kurkushetra and Karnal), Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Coimbatore have all steadily gotten much better over the past 10 years. Bangalore on the other hand has remained underdeveloped due to land mafias.

> Thats mostly because fewer the people, lesser hands there are to throw garbage and pollute, its just that scale of grotesque is reduced not the phenomenon itself.

These are multi-million person cities with populations similar to Bangalore barely 10-15 years ago, yet they are still cleaner and better managed than Bangalore circa 2010.

While population does play a role, Karnataka is unique in that the JDS admin in the 1990s removed almost all urban governance responsibilities from Bangalore and moved it to either the State Commission (eg. zoning) or privatized (eg. garbage collection - but this was because of the World Bank).

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