State of poverty: A reality check

Notwithstanding the BJP-led NDA government claiming various achievements, a detailed analysis reveals that development has primarily benefited the upper echelons of society.

- Dhurjati Mukherjee

The poorer sections have been overlooked, as evidenced by the declining standards of health and education nationwide, for which the states also bear some responsibility.

These observations have been somewhat substantiated by the World Bank. Though it has found that 171 million Indians had been pulled out of extreme poverty and this is quite encouraging, it has revised the poverty line upwards from $2.15 per head per day to $3 per head per day. When the poverty line is raised, more people are expected to be included as poor, not less.

However, if one examines some other metrics of development such as per capita income, the Human Development Index and the Global Hunger Index, the country's rankings are 144, 130 and 105 respectively, which are poor.