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India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

economictimes.indiatimes.com

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Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#321

Post by i67vw3 »

jialutu wrote: post #145

I am really baffled by this claim, since I've been observing the Global Hunger Index for a while, where India has consistently fared worse than even DPRK (North Korea), and is almost the same level as Afghanistan, a country that has been at war for 20 years. https://www.globalhungerindex.org/ I am not sure if these 2 reports are contradictory, or whether they are in agreement with each other (since the GHI score for…

That is a bogus index. Even the government denied it's reporting https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/global-hunger-index-ind...

(Any government will try to say the same thing, to save its face)

But right now, the welfare state is still working (free/discounted food for lower income class). Anecdotally speaking, there is no such 'hunger' observed even in beggar communities. All are pretty much well fed. Due to opening of the economy in 1991, people have become 'rich' and the welfare state has subsequently reduced.

If we are talking about nourishment or nutrient intake, it is also not observed to be lower to the scale the index paints. Even during lockdown and covid pandemic, 200 million or more people were given free/discounted food everyday. There might be more hunger during the lockdowns, covid deaths; but not to high extent the index says compared to other countries.

The index paints the 'hunger' levels on the scale of DPRK or Afghanistan which is just not possible (laughable), if anyone sees it from first hand perspective. I have always been suspicious of the index from the very beginning. Even the past decade reports are suspicious.

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-wheat-exports-hit...

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#323

Post by Xeoncross »

Zircom wrote: post #318
dkokelley wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure of your point, but I think I disagree. The previous comment was about going from poverty to middle class. Why won't this be possible in the future?

Right now India is in a transition period and wages for these kinds of jobs are keeping pace with gains in productivity and that's how you're seeing so many lifting themselves are their families out of poverty. However, if history is anything to go by that will stop pretty soon as the hyper upper class solidifies their hold on wealth, appreciating assets, and means of production, and will start to keep larger and lar…

I'm not sure what the "free market" has to do with it. Capitalism, communism, feudalism, socialism, etc.. always end with the majority of money and power concentrated with the few.

It's just human behavior to be selfish.

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#324

Post by Matticus_Rex »

advisedwang wrote: post #235
damagednoob wrote: post #36

I don't understand poverty statistics. With this news, the UK now has more people living in poverty than India (16% vs 22%?). If it is valuable to judge poverty on relative income, you would think the rational course of action would be mass immigration from the UK to India but that is clearly not the case.

> With this news, the UK now has more people living in poverty than India (16% vs 22%?) The severity of poverty in rich western nations is easy to underestimate. There are people in the UK who are underfed, can't afford heat, have to work multiple jobs etc. This kind of poverty does look different than poverty in India - better in some ways, but worse in others - but it is still poverty. The data on relative poverty…

In what ways does poverty in the UK look worse than poverty in India?

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#325

Post by cuteboy19 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #133
InTheArena wrote: post #65

This is one of the messages that need to be pushed hard - globalization - with it's implications on the "first world" global middle class - has helped make this possible. It's like talking to people opposed to GMO rice. They are fine with an ideological position that GMO foods should be eliminated until you point out the alternative is hundreds of millions dead of starvation.

Why does globalisation automatically deserve credit for progress in two major economies with the most government planning? Have evaluated alternative hypotheses? Maybe Education or Scientific Literacy or something else deserves this credit.

The Indian attempt at Central planning was a disaster. We are here precisely because it was abolished

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#326

Post by allisdust »

retinaros wrote: post #266
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My FIL funded their maid’s kids education. The son got into a decent engineering school and landed a job at TCS. The daughter studied nursing and got a job at a large chain hospital. The kids bought their mom an apartment and a car. Its just amazing to watch - this woman’s mom, grandmom, aunts, uncles were all peasants or did odd trades. Now because of a single generation, the entire family could dream of middle clas…

its amazing. and unfortunately they will be the last generation that will be able to do it. just like for western countries everything will become unaffordable and the middle class wont be able to buy houses

That's not really true for India because unlike developed countries, the housing has a wide price range for any given area. Also it is actually preferable to rent in India because rent doesn't even cover half the emi. Overall, through a lot of measures like tax breaks and cheaper loans for housing developers building affordable housing, reduction in interest for low cost housing, free housing for poorer sections of the populace, government has made housing a non issue apart from a select set of cities like Mumbai where geographical constrains ensure higher prices and low availability.

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#327

Post by femto »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #200
dirtyid wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in a few years India will find focusing on middle class is not enough. There's finite demand for domestic+outsourceable white collar jobs for 1.4B internal market + ~400M English speakers around the world. PRC has 10s of millions of white collar jobs + 100s of millions of manufacturing that pays better than trickle down housesitting, but there's still 100s of millions more stuck in informal economy while both…

Agree completely. We’ve tapped out our services potential. We now need large scale manufacturing. Income inequality and unemployment are very real problems, and its only getting worse. Only manufacturing can create those kind of jobs at scale.

> We’ve tapped out our services potential. We now need large scale manufacturing.

Most "first world" economies are dominated by services, so I would be surprised if India has topped out in services. Do more of the high-level stuff, like design and independent, research and development. "Grunt" work, like churning out code generates, a certain level of wealth. The high-level stuff generates even more. As a crude measure, until India is winning 1.4/7.8 = 18% of Nobel prizes it has untapped potential. (This is not intended as disparagement of India's track record but to highlight the potential for India.)

In my mind the real value of a strong manufacturing industry is that it drives the development of high-level services associated with manufacturing (robotics, materials, science, ...). I'd rather have small highly developed manufacturing sector than a large "low-tech" manufacturing sector.

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#328

Post by naravara »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #262
naravara wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shrinking globalism has a lot of causes so I don't want to overstate the case here, but one big part of the drive to pull back from it is the PRC's own currency manipulation and leveraging of its manufacturing bottleneck for geostrategic aims. They have themselves to blame partly. But really, their demographic precipice is what's going to stall them out. I hope their political system is functional enough to let it tr…

Everyone, certainly India, need to stop population growth. We need to thank China as the developing country that has made massive efforts on that issue over the past 45 years.

India has also hit replacement or below replacement level population in most of the country and it was done without invasively draconian policy setting. Just female literacy and access to healthcare.

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#329

Post by cuteboy19 »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #324
advisedwang wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With this news, the UK now has more people living in poverty than India (16% vs 22%?) The severity of poverty in rich western nations is easy to underestimate. There are people in the UK who are underfed, can't afford heat, have to work multiple jobs etc. This kind of poverty does look different than poverty in India - better in some ways, but worse in others - but it is still poverty. The data on relative poverty…

In what ways does poverty in the UK look worse than poverty in India?

You won't freeze to death without heating

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#330

Post by jojobas »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #133
InTheArena wrote: post #65

This is one of the messages that need to be pushed hard - globalization - with it's implications on the "first world" global middle class - has helped make this possible. It's like talking to people opposed to GMO rice. They are fine with an ideological position that GMO foods should be eliminated until you point out the alternative is hundreds of millions dead of starvation.

Why does globalisation automatically deserve credit for progress in two major economies with the most government planning? Have evaluated alternative hypotheses? Maybe Education or Scientific Literacy or something else deserves this credit.

Because they essentially exported their poverty to the first world.
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