How long to extirpate penury in India? 300 years to end poverty?

Posted on 24 March 2008. Tags: Dalits, India, Penury, Poverty

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Hard information on India is hard to come by. Most of it is Indian foreign office frothy fluff, Bollywood balderdash, panaglossian gloss, and slick slithery marketing spin by India Inc. The rest is lipstick on a pig.

Around six out of 10 Indians live in the countryside, where abject poverty is widespread. 34.7 % of the Indian population lives with an income below $ 1 a day and 79.9 % below $ 2 a day. According to the India’s planning commission report 26.1 % of the population live below the poverty line. [World Bank's poverty line of $1 a day, but the Indian poverty line of Rs 360 a month, or 30 cents a day]

India as a world power? Part 1

World power India? Part 2

India as a World Power: Part 3

The Dalit Network, the Naxalites and some reporting out of India gives a more balanced picture.

India needs 300 years to lift all its people out of extreme levels of poverty, February 11, 2008 by CyberGandhi

The dark reality, By Siddharth Dube and Mohan Guruswamy, IHT

How long to extirpate penury in India? 300 years to end poverty?

The mood among affluent and middle-class Indians as the country marks its 58th year as a republic is unabashedly celebratory. Everywhere they look there is evidence that India is finally being taken seriously as an economic and political powerhouse.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has called for India to be part of an expanded “Group of 8.” Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain has expressed support for India’s place as a permanent member of a refashioned UN Security Council. The World Bank and financial leaders at the World Economic Forum are looking to India to help power the world out of its economic downturn. India’s finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, has predicted another year of over 9 percent economic growth, record foreign investment, and low inflation.

So it is little wonder that prosperous Indians increasingly think of their country as “Incredible India!,” the tag line of the government’s global advertising campaign.
While there is some welcome truth to these new images, the defining reality of India is that it remains the land of mass poverty, scarcely less so than before its economy began to take off 15 years ago.

How long to end poverty in “Bharat” Affluence in Bharat
India as world power! Part 1

The government’s latest survey of living standards reports that the number of extremely poor Indians, those chronically unable to consume even the minimum calories needed for full functioning, is an astonishing 301 million, just 19 million less than in 1983. At this rate, it would take India 300 years to lift all its people out of even the most extreme levels of poverty. The survey’s results suggest that extreme poverty has fallen no faster, and possibly more slowly, in the past 15 years of spectacular economic growth than in earlier periods, challenging the popular notion that money “trickles down” to all.

Moreover, the true scale of poverty and deprivation is far greater than that suggested by even the huge ranks of the extremely poor. A recent report by the prominent economist Arjun Sengupta, chairman of a key government commission on labor conditions, emphasized that another 50 percent of India’s people, over 500 million in all, live on less than 20 rupees a day, which puts them above the official poverty line but still leaves them “in abject poverty and excluded from all the glory of a shining India.” Twenty rupees is about 50 U.S. cents, but adjusted for purchasing power falls somewhat below the $2 a day international poverty line. While the proportion of Indians living in such poverty has being falling slowly, their absolute numbers have risen by 100 million in the past 15 years alone.

Poverty has never been high on India’s political agendas. The interests of India’s business elite and growing middle classes dominate media attention. Celebrations of prosperity, typified by the “Incredible India!” campaign, drown out the ubiquitous evidence that the vast majority of Indians lead desperate lives. The view from middle-class India today is that theirs is a land of wealthy and middle-class people, with a small and shrinking minority of impoverished people. No wonder: In a interview with the BBC earlier this year Chidambaram, a key architect of narrow business-friendly reforms, asserted, “I’m confident we can wipe out poverty by 2040.”
What will it take to transform India’s newfound dynamism and prosperity into a meaningful reduction in poverty?
The first step is government recognition of the true scale of poverty. For decades, successive Indian governments have played down the scale of the poverty challenge by insisting that the cut-off line marking poverty be set extraordinarily low, at a level that most experts would consider not poverty but outright destitution. (India’s poverty line is significantly lower than even the widely used $1 per day extreme poverty line.) A report by the Center for Policy Alternatives estimates that a poverty line adequate to cover the costs of meeting such basic human needs as education, nutrition, health care, clothing, safe water and sanitation, would be roughly twice as high as the poverty line in use today. Nearly 80 percent of India’s population would be considered impoverished were the government to adopt this poverty line.
Faced with a true recognition of the massive extent of poverty, the Indian state’s response must certainly include further efforts to sustain the rapid economic growth of recent years. It is this performance that has moved some 90 million Indians into the middle-and upper-class. But with hundreds of millions remaining impoverished, and millions more added to the work force every year, India needs a pattern of economic growth that rapidly creates many decently paid jobs. This requires far more success in expanding manufacturing and industry, following China’s example, rather than just the services sector. And, even more critically, it requires rural prosperity through ending the disastrous neglect of agriculture, rural infrastructure (particularly state-provided irrigation), and rural industries. The lobbyists from trade, finance and business – who have been embraced too closely by almost all of India’s political parties – have little interest in these areas.
Economic growth and jobs will create avenues for the educated and the healthy among the poor to begin to rise out of poverty. But hundreds of millions of Indians are poorly educated or outright illiterate, malnourished, vulnerable to illness, and often oppressed – with the lowest castes, Muslims, and women of the populous northern states worst off.

Setting right these inequities requires not just more money – though far higher government investments are needed on some fronts, such as public health and providing social security benefits to every one of the poor. Much of the billions spent on India’s panoply of poverty programs ends up in the pockets of the country’s legion of corrupt officials, politicians and business people; another large share is never spent because of bureaucratic inefficiency. There are no quick-fix solutions to such problems. Without the mobilization of the poor in rural and urban areas alike, and agrarian reform, neither the government nor the private sector will ever deliver education, health or other vital programs to the poor in a manner that will remedy the backlog of the past. India’s peninsular states have a far better track record on basic services and, increasingly, on poverty, precisely because of decades of political and social movements committed to equity. Such social mobilization is the foundation for eventually making India’s democracy responsive to the country’s impoverished majority.

Incredible India! is still very far from a reality on the ground. It will take nothing less than several decades of commitment to pro-poor economic growth, government reform and mobilization in favor of the poor to realize this vision of India.

Siddharth Dube is the author of “In the Land of Poverty.” Mohan Guruswamy is the chairman of the Center for Policy Alternatives, New Delhi. Courtsey: Dalitnation.wordpress.com and Dalit Network.

$The South Asia Subcontinent is sometimes incorrectly called \$

$\'India is no more a country than the Equator\'.Winston Churchill$

$The South Asia Subcontinent is sometimes incorrectly called \$

We have tried to analyze this question in depth and tried to divorce the myth from the Bollywood reality. Is India a failed state? Yes. India is not a state. If India is poor. How long to end poverty in “Bharat” Affluence in Bharat. The status of India has to be looked at. India as world power! Part 1. We broke this article into two parts. World power India: Part 2. The real problem of India is the strange and with amazing that is repulsive to the planet. Chilled Urine drinking hot in India. From Gandhi to Prime Minister Desai to common man. Bigotry runs wild and is sanctioned against the 250 million Dalits. Hindu India: A gift from the Hindu Gods:Cows Urine: UK Telegraph reports by Julian West. More on Urine drinking in India. A fit from the Gods to Hindus. Bottled Cow Urine. Story reported by Daily Telegraph of UK. The situation may have arisen becuase the father of the nation Mr. Gandhi had very strange antics. Sex life of Mohandas Gandhi, his failures and sexual perversion. His life is like an open book. Sex life of Indira Gandhi. It wans’t just Gandhi it was Mr. Nehru also. Nehru was Gay! Affair with Edwina also

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Vijay says:

September 8, 2008 at 11:17 pm

India needs 300 years to lift all its people out of extreme levels of poverty, February 11, 2008 by CyberGandhi
rather than encouraging the Indian effort to uplift the indian masses from poverty, suckling anti Indian writeup by tons has no meaning. I ask simple question How long it takes o turn 100% terrorists and declare a terriorist state… guess less than decade may be 25 yesrs to disintegrate… look internal before blaming India.. this is the effort of yours for last 60 years, come on now chnage you mind set for better of India and join hands with india to uplift the ppor, how long Pakistan play chamcha ( spoon) to saudi’s and Chini’s.. now it is time stan on its feet and walk, run and grow, anti Indain ritterik does not help but only poison the innocent, uneducated Pakistani youth mind and in tern produce more terorists.
Moin please write sensible and some thing constructive, you can use you knowldge ( which is always in wrong direction) for betterment of Pkaistan, USA (the country you live), neighbours like India and general public.
Best example of how talent is wasted.
Good Luck and I want to see a article how India, palkstan be best of world in next 25 years.

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Moin Ansari says:

September 9, 2008 at 9:46 pm

This is the article on “India as World Power Part III”. The first two parts were written by Cyber Gandhi of Dalit Network..

http://rupeenews.com/2008/08/05/india-as-a-world-power-part-3/

CAN SINGH OVERCOME HIS “AKHAND BHARAT” PROGRAMMING?

Reply
rejinpaulabu says:

October 5, 2009 at 2:57 pm

I dont understand why I am reading this stuff and commenting on it. Just cant help it. I just cant understand the mind set of the writer. Its seems the writers anti India rhetoric has blinded him of human sensitivities. For the mere purpose of selfish gratification of his and of some of his targetted audience, he doesnt mind mocking at some one hunger, someones pain with a veil suggesting that this work is politically motivated which is misleading. We are humans first and I think that hunger is more compelling than sensationalism. You dont know what it means to be hungry. Do you?

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- Moin Ansari says:
  
  October 5, 2009 at 3:36 pm
  
  We criticize, the US, the UK, China, Lanka, Australia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan etc. Why would Bharat be an exception?
  
  Mr. Paulabu was not able to refute any of the facts so he resoted to character assassination techniques.
  
  Perhaps mr. Paulabu hunger questions can be directed to those who are purchasing $10 Billion of planes, $3 billion of Air Craft Carriers–in fact $100 billion worth of arms–money that can be spent on the poor.
  
  Bharat is the millstone on South Asia–forcing all neighbors to match arms.
  
  In the past few weeks more than 1.6 million visitors have read articles on our site. Millions other read our articles reported on more than 132 other sites. Hundreds of thousands read our message on newsgroups and boards. Obvioulsy we must be doing something right.
  
  167,184 Alexa Traffic Rank
  Alexa Traffic Rank: A measure of a website’s popularity. The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past 3 months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked #1.
  
  4,538 Traffic Rank in PK
  
  How Rupeenews.com is ranked around the world:
  4,538 Pakistan 32,585 India 333,540 United States 346,851 France
  
  Rupeenews.com users come from these countries:
  46.0% Pakistan 39.6% India 9.3% United States 0.6% France 4.5% OTHER More
  
  Where people go on Rupeenews.com:
  100.0% rupeenews.com
  
  Looking at the mirror is a hard thing to do. While some Bharati are proud of their so called “democracy” it is amazing that on a national and individual level the denizens of the land of the Ganges cannot handle criticism.
  
  Inability to read any criticism of Bharat is a national predicament for all temple indoctrinated Bharatis—they cannot handle it
  
  You don’t have to read it. You can stay in your comfort zone of hinduunity.org
  
  Of course there is a back arrow button–no one forces people of the Bharati persuation to read Rupee News. One had to type the URL–not typing it in does not impact us in any way.
  
  Reply
  - rich05 says:
    
    October 6, 2009 at 5:13 am
    
    dear moin.
    
    this ramadan 20 women and children died in karachi fighting for food as their families were starving at home, and this in the biggest city in pakistan not some remote area, can u explain what ur pakistn govt is doing, or planning to do,
    
    so we can follw it and do the same in india remote areas,
    
    so will u guve the sma eadvice to ur govt/army, stop purchasing arme and feed the straving, in pakistan, and stop selling land to arabs so these poor may till the land and feed their starving poor
    
    Rgds
    
    richie
    
    Reply
    - Moin Ansari says:
      
      October 6, 2009 at 11:17 pm
      
      The article discusses the disparity between the economic growth rate of Bharat and how long it would take to pull the penury stricken population of Bharat from poverty. It is an economic analysis done by the Financial Times of India.
      
      Your interpretation of the incident is really part of your tmple indoctrination, Islamphobia, and Anti-Pakistan bigitory.
      
      Free food was being distributed by a philathropic organization. One woman slipped an fell down the stars which caused a stamped and some people were crushed.
      
      It is sad that your kind uses a human tragedy and an accident to score politcal points.
      
      That was an incident–not a systemic issues. However truth has never been your stong point…you simple do race baiting.
      
      Reply
Rosh says:

February 10, 2010 at 3:17 am

I Just cant believe why Indians are responding to these posts. I as a Indian read this just to have a good laugh over the articles posted here. I mean i coudlnt find a single thing on net that says pakistan won the 1965 71 and 99 wars and yet here it has been exaggerated to the point that pakistan is way beyond doubt stornger than India. To my Indian brothers, please stop reading these articles from a serious point of view. We very well know were we stand in respect to them. Thier anti India ginjoism and words are the only two dolls that they have to show to the local population. No wonder then that there is sooo much hatred among the population towards Indians.

Reply
- Moin Ansari says:
  
  February 10, 2010 at 1:11 pm
  
  All the best to our sober friends who know it all–Never mind that most of the information presented here is from Bharati sources and international analysts. Never mind that the information is authenticated and re-checked from multiple channels
  
  Mr. Rosh and others suffer from the same temple indotrination that makes them so hated in Australia, Nepal, Lanka, Maldives, Bhutan, Sikkim and China.
  
  No other version of events is possible–all truth resides in the temple.
  
  We don’t force you guys to read our site. You are more than most welcome not to visit it. The fact remains that our growing readership knows very well, that every bit of information on this site is accurate and the sources are always listed.
  
  Reply
rob says:

March 5, 2010 at 1:40 am

Agreed.. this shows what an educated terrorist is all about. Its basically an educated by brain, but not using the brain for any good work. Instead wasting it in bashing a global icon Mr Gandhi or disgracing the country which forms next largest economies i.e. BRIC. he he .. :)
Listen man hate will not make any good in you.
One day you will die , and no one even bother about you. Mr Gandhi will remain a global icon, will keep getting followers like Obama. Or neither India will stop becoming stronger economy. So instead why not to spend your precious time for some better work, why not you take up giving education to any poor people around where you stay currently. Take your call, you want to waste your life or want to use it for some good work, so at least those childs whom you educate will remember you.

Reply
- Moin Ansari says:
  
  March 5, 2010 at 2:35 pm
  
  Rupee News does not accept free adivce. We have no malice or hatred towards anyone. If you wish to take up your objectionns of the books review on Mr. Mohnadas Gandhi, please take it up with the 109th Congress of the United States of America which condemned the racist bigotry of Mr. Gandhi. Please also write to Dr. G.B SIngh and the two grandsons of Mr. Gandhi who recently wrote to books on Mohandas.
  
  We simply report the facts.
  
  Reply
finan says:

March 17, 2010 at 8:36 pm

Rich/Vijay,

Dont you think you should be concentrating on solving your own mass rediculed Dalits, poor people who cannot sopport themselves for a day. Leave others problems and correct your own people who are wrong on all counts and not liked by any neighbours.India needs to adjust the temperament to survive among the commity of nations and should take lead to get to her smaller neighbours, but its other way around. No kid takes dictation from their parents anymore, unless you talk to them in a friendly way.

Fix your own house, mentality, conduct be a proud citizen of a classic country. India’s actions speaks louder than mere words, if the actions are goods no one will complain.

Stop thinking or dreaming of becoming super power, as that would need a herculian effort in fixing the thatchet home first, then actions and affections. Look around and observe the rise and fall of big empires all over the world and in your indian history. You know why all that happens”WRONG POLICIES”.

Lead by example and be true to your words. Acknowlede the truth, you lost in 65 and US and Israel saved you in 99. Arguments cannot correct the truth and the history. We as a nation have faults and we cannot claim to be saint, but we dont do what india does to smaller nations around her.

Can you imagine how undignified is to stop someone’s water on which depends the economy. India can never solve its problems if it wants to become any kind of power,look at the money america is pouring out just to find osama bin laden to save american people, but even then thousands die everyday for common reasons known to all. Now the progress is reversed and remember, what goes up shall come down. You correct yourself and we correct ourselves. I have tons to write but will save it for better purpose, rather than comparing with inferior country.

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How they are manipulate India ??? « Dalits from Kerala News says:

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[...] failed state? Yes. India is not a state. If India is poor. How long to end poverty in “Bharat” Affluence in Bharat. The status of India has to be looked at. India as world power! Part 1. We broke this article into [...]

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