India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by tock » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 4:41 AM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #363

rishav_sharan wrote: post #352

While my country has made tremendous progress, I wonder how precise these numbers are. India's poverty line doesn't gets redrawn every year to account for the inflation and increased cost of living. The current definition of the poverty line is daily earnings 27 rs for rural areas and 33 for urban, which is a ludicrously low number. Even beggars earn more than that. Of course we will have very low poverty if we use s…

To put things in perspective, I have 40 Rs in my wallet now, and I can't buy anything with it. It's less than a dollar, and it feels like less than a dollar. Edit: to put things in perspective, I'm a tourist

Huh you can easily get breakfast for 40 Rs. Even in Bangalore.

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

#372

Post by newyankee » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 4:44 AM UTC

safog wrote: post #358

retinaros wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Unlikely because there's basically no NIMBY-ism in India. Any developer can just acquire land, some air rights and plop up apartment complexes. And unlike in the US, apartments in India are designed for family life and aren't just for young / unmarried folks.

However, land is the most politically charged investment in India which is controlled by vested and powerful interests once over a certain threshold. It is not that straightforward. Compared to income , houses are very expensive. FSI is very low in India even with Transit oriented development finally becoming popular now. We may not have US style suburbia , however the GINI coefficient or anything similar calculated for per person area availability to live, is going to be significantly skewed.

For example, in Mumbai average people barely find more than few sq ft to live in whereas families like Godrej control land worth approx 10 b $ in the city itself. Moreover the Godrej family do not want the entire land to be used for development per se and are unwilling to part with some of it for developmental infrastructure projects. The moral of the story is that it is the same (if not worse) as any other country.

The rental yield on houses in India can be as low as 2% (source: Personal) which should in theory lead to crash in housing prices, but that is not happening as population in city will constantly increase with rural to urban migration.

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

#373

Post by newyankee » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 4:46 AM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #290

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #3

One of the best things about living in India is watching families move from lower or lower-middle class to middle-class status. Usually, all it takes is someone from the family landing a white-collar job. While the tech bodyshops (TCS, Infosys, etc.) might have a poor reputation in the US, these companies have been absolutely critical in helping move tens of millions into middle-class respectability.

Not only tech jobs (which certainly have been the biggest factor in lifting tons of lower income to middle/higher income status) but overall due to globalization, lot of jobs have opened up in the past 25 or so years. I grew up in the 80s and 90s in India and moved to US in 2000. Now I am a US Citizen but when I do go back to visit, I literally know people who were poor/lower middle class and they all are now living…

I have actually lived this myself so can attest.

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

#374

Post by newyankee » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 4:48 AM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #211

wobbly_bush wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real estate will get more expensive due to political greed than any other kind of development. The supply of real estate is artificially constrained by the political class, so any kind of development (say hypothetically manufacturing instead of software) will make it expensive. There used to be a time when new land for building houses was frequently sold by the government in the form of new "colonies", but that has c…

A big reason why Gurgaon real estate is more expensive than Bangalore despite having way more land and poorer jobs is government corruption. All those bribes and backroom deals get siphoned off to buy apartments and land. These buyers can hold forever because their cost basis is practically 0. I’m actively hunting for an apartment in NCR and get painfully reminded of how poor I actually am.

I visited NCR for first time recently and found that although the metro is amazing, NCR still remains a large urban sprawl whose land potential has not been utilized properly. With continually developing infrastructure on more metro, RRTS etc. hopefully the land utilization also improves.

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

#375

Post by newyankee » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 4:50 AM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #94

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #3

One of the best things about living in India is watching families move from lower or lower-middle class to middle-class status. Usually, all it takes is someone from the family landing a white-collar job. While the tech bodyshops (TCS, Infosys, etc.) might have a poor reputation in the US, these companies have been absolutely critical in helping move tens of millions into middle-class respectability.

Be careful with that, I saw the same happening in Brazil between 2002-2012 just to start unraveling quickly after that. Our economies and societies are still pretty fragile, any political shock can start a downwards spiral. Stay vigilant.

But Brazil is a really rich country when you consider resources, India is not so, especially when you look at the population size. Only hope for India to maintain momentum is replicating at least 25 % of the Chinese manufacturing success.

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

#376

Post by newyankee » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 4:52 AM UTC

itspi wrote: post #228

I don't comment but also hate reading popular threads like this but I will do it anyway because someone was interested in hearing from someone living in India. There's so much emphasis (from comments) on information technology services contributing to this. This is a recent phenomenon. Growth due to IT services was extremely concentrated in a few cities and most took their family there. India was never a nation state…

You missed the Green revolution somewhere around 1967 I think. Millions would've died without it.

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

#377

Post by ArtixFox » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 4:53 AM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #363

rishav_sharan wrote: post #352

While my country has made tremendous progress, I wonder how precise these numbers are. India's poverty line doesn't gets redrawn every year to account for the inflation and increased cost of living. The current definition of the poverty line is daily earnings 27 rs for rural areas and 33 for urban, which is a ludicrously low number. Even beggars earn more than that. Of course we will have very low poverty if we use s…

To put things in perspective, I have 40 Rs in my wallet now, and I can't buy anything with it. It's less than a dollar, and it feels like less than a dollar. Edit: to put things in perspective, I'm a tourist

thats enough for a 1 time meal of chhole bhature

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

#378

Post by ArtixFox » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 4:58 AM UTC

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…

worse than NK? lmao any index claiming that is absolutely wrong you get 1 kilo of rice or more for 2 rupees from the government and other stuff too. Sure not everyone is well fed but we aint as bad as NK

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

#379

Post by newyankee » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 5:01 AM UTC

onionopinion wrote: post #356

Pmop wrote: post #299

So they lifted almost twice my home country's population out of poverty in 15 years? That's impressive. Also, how did India got to have so many people?

Atleast on story I have heard from my grand parents is: In 1960s villages didn't have access to medicine or doctors. So people used to produce 5-7 children so atleast 1-2 went into adulthood. But as medicine became more easily accessible all 5-7 children ended up in adulthood leading to population increase. Nowadays I see max 2 children in villages.

The average fertility rate in India is 2.2 now I think. It is below 2 in Southern states and still relatively high in BIMARU states which are the biggest problems.

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

#380

Post by newyankee » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 5:02 AM UTC

Dharmakirti wrote: post #169

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Asia was captured by the East India Company, and the wealth of its people systematically extracted over centuries. This is different from the many other local wars and invasions that happened in India before and during this time, where either the invaders left after stealing wealth once, or they stayed and generally tried to improve the area they captured. Systematic extraction of wealth was only a feature of c…

> hate for capitalism is pretty old in certain parts of the world. I would like to have a different take. India has a strong merchant class since aeons and market economy was never a taboo culturally. You can see that in the entrepreneurs like Bansals, Agrawals, Shahs that are at the helm of Indian Unicorns. So yes, there is a skepticism about 'western' capitalism, but not for market economics.

Which is exactly the reason why communism could never rise the way it did in China and Soviet union. I mean most of the population accepted their 'fate' in the feudal systems.