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

705 points by cryoz 4y ago

G3rn0ti 4y ago
Technically, India did not do this. The people lifted themselves out of poverty because, finally, India‘s government had granted them enough freedom to pursue their happiness.
- dc-programmer 4y ago
  Economic freedom follows rule of law. And enforcing rule of law is not a passive activity. Free markets are only possible when governments take an active and benevolent role in society
- jimbokun 4y ago
  Doesn't "India" include the Indian people?
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    What are you going to suggest next, a company consists of employees and a chair is made of atoms? To neoliberalism, Countries and Companies are like the ghosts. They have a will of their own, they are immaterial and can't be pinned down. Together with the omnipotent and omnibenevolent Invisible Hand they form the Trinity and Haunt the stock market. If there is a recession, it is never a structural problem in the market, it is always because the consumers have sinned.
imwillofficial 4y ago
Go India!
crocwrestler 4y ago
Just think of all the elderly demented Americans that got scammed out of their life savings to pay for that
known 4y ago
Proven 4y ago
spaceman_2020 4y ago
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.
- piva00 4y ago
  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.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    I think the difference is India is a major startup hub that mostly caters to the local market so the effort to shift to more resilient income streams not completely dependent on the global market are underway, something Brazil did not do.
    - spaceman_2020 4y ago
      Entirely possible India hits a lean phase and stays stuck where it is. Truth be told, everything from infrastructure to basic law and order are far behind even a “middle income trap” country like Thailand. Too early to pat ourselves on the back.
    - mayama 4y ago
      And recent focus on manufacturing. New govt is heavily pushing local manufacturing(atmanirbhar bharat) for last 8 years. Progress is already being felt in some areas, for example in smartphone manufacturing India went from nothing to #2 in world in those years. They are now targeting more phone phone supply chains like pcb, modems etc. and other consumer electronics too. https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/india-now-2nd-largest-mobile-handset-manufacturer-in-the-world-says-amitabh-kant-71643607326675.html https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/india-now-2nd-larg...
3qz 4y ago
seibelj 4y ago
[flagged]
- brosinante 4y ago
  Didn't China (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...) and the USSR (https://borgenproject.org/tag/poverty-in-the-former-soviet-union/ https://borgenproject.org/tag/poverty-in-the-former-soviet-u...) do similarly?
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Most communists and socialists will refer to both the USSR and China as capitalist projects on accelerated timelines. They were trying to speed-run from feudalism, through capitalism, to communism. At least that's what comes up when you mention the problems that these countries have.
  - AnnikaL 4y ago
    Your second link refers to poverty being reduced after the fall of communism, when former Soviet states instituted capitalist reforms.
    - throwaway4good 4y ago
      There was a massive drop in living standards in the former Soviet Union after the introduction of capitalism in the 90es. Average life expectancy dropped something like 10 years, corresponding to millions of dead.
      - kurisufag 4y ago
        >There was a massive drop in living standards that tends to happen when the government runs resources down to near-zero, forcing the new system to start from scratch. had the conversion occurred earlier, when the USSR was still a reasonably successful state, I suspect it would have gone nicer.
aerovistae 4y ago
Interested in comments from anyone who lives in India or has experience/familiarity with it as to whether reality on the ground matches the rosy picture painted in the article.
- abhinavm 4y ago
  It is true. A lot has to do with the reforms of 1991-96. It is only when you think back that you realise how bad the situation was back then and how much had changed.
- aravindgp 4y ago
  India did make progress in lifting poverty. The numbers wary according to context but yes in absolute numbers India did make significant progress. Most of it is done by IT and pharma industry.
- TuringNYC 4y ago
  Firstly, thanks for posting this. Everything done to help alleviate poverty is wonderful, no matter how it is achieved. I'm American, but of Indian origin. Our family visited many major cities in India when I was a child (early 90s) and it was heartbreaking. We just kept wondering -- how does anyone begin to fix poverty that is so vast? We gave a lot of charity (esp schooling support) over the years but it always seemed like just scratching the surface of a vast problem. We havent been back since -- but i'd say every family helped is a positive step. Solutions do not need to be 100% comprehensive at the start. I look forward to more economic success for the people of India, and for people everywhere.
- as1mov 4y ago
  I can give me 2 cents (or paisa hah), apologies if it gets a little sentimental, I am drunk. Looks like I've ascended on the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Grew up in a poor family with my dad as the sole earner taking care of my mother and 3 kids. Mum used to do minor clothes repair work for neighbours for some extra money, but it wasn't much. One of my first memories is waddling along to the ration shop (cheap subsidized government shops) with my mother to buy rice and kerosene for cooking. Things were hard for quite a while (I was about 12 or 13), it didn't really change until my oldest sibling got a job at Infosys after finishing university. Now that I look back on it, what they were paying him wasn't much, but for us it was a life changer. We could afford daily essentials without any hassle. No longer we needed to buy things on credit from the grocery stores, no longer we were worried about not being able to pay the electricity bills at the end of the month. It did change the trajectory of our life dramatically, as it allowed me and my other sibling to afford university. I did a bachelors in Computer Science and eventually managed to move to Europe for work after a few years. We are in a much better position than we were 15 years ago. I know people here tend to look down on these cheap curry-consultancies for their dogshit services but at the other end of the line there are real humans too. Same dreams and ambitions as you do. It's true that these companies pay their actual employees peanuts and treat them like shit, but sometimes that's good enough when the baseline of what life gave you to begin with was wayyyy less. This is just anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt, but this was a similar story for many of my friends from childhood. It's a little funny that people here assume that everyone on this forum is some FAANG engineer earning $400k in SF, there's also a small section of us little people hanging out in the corners :)
joenot443 4y ago
Do millennial and gen-z Indians have a similarly skeptical view towards capitalism held by so many young people in NA and the EU? I had a friend tell me the other day that I couldn't be anti-racist if I wasn't anti-capitalist, because capitalism is by inherently racist. Ever since 2018 or so it seems as if anti-capitalism has become part of the mainstream progressive Western viewpoint, while I don't remember that being the case in the 2000s. Are these views held around the world, or do I just have a very well-selected sample?
- wiseowise 4y ago
  Have you tried leaving home and touching grass? Because everything you‘ve wrote doesn’t make any sense.
  - joenot443 4y ago
    Which part, specifically, confused you? Was it 'well-selected sample'? Was it the notion of anti-racism? Neither of these are terms I coined, but they're fairly well defined in my social groups. I'm happy to clarify any topics you're unfamiliar with.
- xmprt 4y ago
  I think India is already quite socialist to begin with so anti-capitalism isn't a very strong sentiment there. There's also a lot less centralization and fewer monopolies. I probably shopped at my local small business much more often than I went to a big box store in India whereas in the US, I can't remember the last time I was able to conveniently do business at a small business.
- abdullahkhalids 4y ago
  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 capitalist firm made of people who said they were distinct from you, and superior (please note 'race' was invented by Europeans). So, hate for capitalism is pretty old in certain parts of the world.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Such an awesome accomplishment. Also, it’s interestingly a huge black eye to the CCP: news of this Indian accomplishment will be censored in China, because it proves that nations can progress without forced-sterilization/-abortion/-1-child-policy/authoritarianism/ etc.
- ardit33 4y ago
  I think this is a world wide trend as well. Humanity is progressing with every generation. (this is true even in Africa). Some countries progressing faster though, (China being one of them).
  - Shoue 4y ago
    In absolute terms, yes we are seeing advancements in tech/medicine and the like and that will always help more and more people, but in more relative economic terms it's questionable whether the gap between poorer nations and richer ones is actually closing, because there is economic evidence that the gap is actually widening: > Net Resource Transfers (NRT) for all developing countries have been mostly large and negative since the early 1980s, indicating sustained and significant outflows from the developing world (see graph below) https://gfintegrity.org/press-release/new-report-on-unrecorded-capital-flight-finds-developing-countries-are-net-creditors-to-the-rest-of-the-world/ https://gfintegrity.org/press-release/new-report-on-unrecord...
- richard___ 4y ago
  Why do so many people on HN hate on China? What's your relationship with Chinese people in your personal life?
  - _zamorano_ 4y ago
    It's the double standards, you know. Not being able to vote, and so... While the US and its war machine has lost track of destroyed countries in this last decades in an Orwellian permanent conflict. But the bad guys are the chinese, who hasn't been involved in a war in 40 years.
achow 4y ago
The UNDP Report (pdf link) https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/2022-10/2022mpireportenpdf.pdf https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/2022-10/2...
factsarelolz 4y ago
Thanks to the United States of America wether it be through legal or illegal means.
- verisimilitude 4y ago
  Hmm. If you are saying we are all interconnected, relying on the diverse resources, products, and gifts from around this small planet to do the things we want to do, e.g. care for our sick, advance the common good, protect the vulnerable, provide stable sources of food _so that_ our global population can grow in a safe, equitable, sustainable manner toward lives full of fulfillment and wonder, away from subsistence living that steals time and health and hope from those stuck with no other choice, then, yes. But if you mean the US should take credit, then, no.
  - factsarelolz 4y ago
    The US has injected untold billions into the Indian market through off shoring phone support. India has made hundreds of millions of dollar scamming America's most vulnerable population.
    - another_devy 4y ago
      US has not injected billions into India! Capitalist companies trying to find cheaper and disposable labour has done it. Of course the US Government police allows that but the policy is there because of these companies not other way around. > scamming America’s most vulnerable population Nothing from that goes to Government taxes or public benefits. These people are not out of poverty by scamming. please try not to down punch some positive news from “Third world countries” if you don’t have any constructive criticism
      - steve76 4y ago
        [dead]
    - throwaway123x 4y ago
freeCandy 4y ago
https://archive.md/9UPfu https://archive.md/9UPfu
hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
How wonderful! In the influx of bad news it stands out as an awesome accomplishment. Congratulations, India!
cuteboy19 4y ago
The move away from socialist economic policy has been a great boon for the Indian people. But a lot needs to be done still to root out the corruption and wastage of the socialist days
damagednoob 4y ago
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.
- bparsons 4y ago
  These are two very different definitions. The international definition of extreme poverty means living on less than $1.90 a day. It is the basic ability to survive. The domestic poverty threshold definition in the UK is whether or not you are able to maintain a fairly stable middle class standard of living.
- DimitriPetrova 4y ago
  Apparently the Multidimensional Poverty Measure is defined as; An index that captures the percentage of households in a country deprived along three dimensions of well-being – monetary poverty, education, and basic infrastructure services – to provide a more complete picture of poverty. There's also the Multidimensional Poverty Index which has an alternate definition
  - jimbokun 4y ago
    But is there a greater percentage of people in UK deprived along any of those dimensions?
    - deathgripsss 4y ago
      It must be relative to that nation. From my experience the UK IS becoming an incredibly segregated nation along economic lines. I don't find it hard to believe that 22% of the populace are in relative poverty. This is very different from absolute poverty, of which I'm sure India has a higher percentage.
      - formerkrogemp 4y ago
InTheArena 4y ago
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.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  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.
  - anuvrat1 4y ago
    It's quite easy to see, the early growth is hard carried by export of manufacturing from China and services from India. Yes, you can say, this wouldn't be possible without Chinese government infrastructure and incentives push and Indian government early push for premiere education, but that would have been useless without customers that are global markets.
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj
  - jojobas 4y ago
    Because they essentially exported their poverty to the first world.
    - bergenty 4y ago
      Poverty in the first world isn’t real poverty.
newsclues 4y ago
Hasn't there been recent news about toxic pollution in the region? What good is lifting people out of poverty, if they are lifted out of poverty and placed in a toxic urban environment?
- abhinavm 4y ago
  A major source of pollution is stubble burning, which is of rural origin.
- Choco31415 4y ago
  That article was specifically about India’s capital. It’s also possible that problem can be fixed in the future, so people are lifted into a clean urban environment. Also, last I recalled, London faced similar issues before and is in a much healthier state nowadays.
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    It's also more about geography. Had there been no Himalayas, the problem would be much less acute
- gandalfgeek 4y ago
  This line of reasoning needs to be stopped. If you haven't lived or grown up through India's pre-capitalist era you have no idea what you're talking about. Ask any Indian about it and I think they'll tell you that urban pollution is a small price to pay for the distance they've come in terms of overall quality of life and wealth.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  If they aren't in poverty you have more options for reducing pollution. When someone is so poor that they can just barely feed themselves and their family, you can't realistically expect them to do much to reduce pollution. You can't really enforce pollution regulation because they can't pay fines and tossing them in prison only makes things worse. When they're able to afford some luxuries they're capable of devoting more thought towards their environment and can afford to spend more for more environmentally friendly living.
gandalfgeek 4y ago
I grew up in India in the 90s, saw first hand the transition from the disastrous socialism of the Nehru era to open markets, capitalism and deregulation. (The end of "license raj".) It started with PV Narasimha Rao as PM and Manmohan Singh as his finance minister in the early 90s. Thankfully Singh himself had a fruitful tenure as PM later. All it took for India to take off was the shackles of govt control to come off. Sad to see that the lesson hasn't been learned and even today there is a strong strain of socialist reasoning calling for more govt control on markets. Concrete example: before deregulation one had to pull strings (e.g. have family or friends in the civil service) to get a phone to your house, then wait a few months after approval to actually get the wire to your house. That was also the era that there were two channels on TV, both state controlled (Doordarshan) that broadcast maybe 5-6 hrs per day.
- ganeshkrishnan 4y ago
  >both state controlled (Doordarshan) that broadcast maybe 5-6 hrs per day. We just had one channel DD1 It would start in the evening around 7 pm I think with this tune https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-7JmGB9BRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-7JmGB9BRA
- softveda 4y ago
  The license raj is still there for business, except maybe some sectors like tech startups. Yes there has been improvements in citizens life like mobile phones etc. But official harassment and bribery is as prevalent as before. Want to get a passport issued or renewed have to pay Rs 500 to the police. Just last week a mother and her kids died as they were turned away from a govt hospital as they could not show the Aadhar id card. Read the Indian news and this kind of cases as their every week.
  - sbmthakur 4y ago
    I wonder which city this would be where you still need to bribe the police for getting a passport. I got mine in 2015 and the process was hassle-free. But this was in a tier-1 city, so my experience might be an exception.
jialutu 4y ago
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/ 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 India has been trending downwards). Does anyone who is more knowledgeable on this please explain?
- ArtixFox 4y ago
  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
- rajeshp1986 4y ago
  The reason for this is the population is so large that absolute numbers will be still very high. There are still millions of people that need to be lifted.
- i67vw3 4y ago
  That is a bogus index. Even the government denied it's reporting https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/global-hunger-index-india-rank-107-government-11463151.html 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-record-785-million-tonnes-2021-22-traders-2022-04-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-wheat-exports-hit...
atentaten 4y ago
> India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN At what costs? I've heard this narrative before as it has happened in many Western countries and it is continuing to happen in China. I don't have the answer, but I always wonder about the costs of lifting so many people out of poverty, for example, there could be costs related to: environment, quality of life, traditions and values, mental health, etc. Along with that thought experiment, I wonder how did they get into poverty in the first place. A lot of areas that are now declared as poverty zones today may have been poor in the past, but were self-sufficient and self sustaining.
- feyman_r 4y ago
  >> there could be costs related to: environment, quality of life, traditions and values, mental health, etc. quality of life, mental health: are you implying folks in poverty were perhaps happier before? If so, you're probably not familiar with life in poverty. environment: while there are larger issues that could likely surface (more consumption of electricity, additional waste etc.), the environment in which they lived most likely improved (sanitation, medical help, gas instead of wood-burning stove, cow-dung as fuel, water-borne diseases); this comes from personal experience having lived close to one of the largest slums a long, long time ago.
- vhanda 4y ago
  > I wonder how did they get into poverty in the first place. A lot of areas that are now declared as poverty zones today may have been poor in the past, but were self-sufficient and self sustaining. Well, when the British left in 1945, roughly 15% of the country was literate [0], now that is up to 77% [0]. From here [1], it seems that poverty was around 45% of the population (361 million). It also says the rate varied based on how the monsoon season went, which makes sense for a primarily agrarian society, especially one which had to import food to meet their needs till 1965 (roughly). so, basically, the British didn't leave India in a good place. See [2] [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India#/media/File:Literacy_India_1901_2011_Detail.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India#/media/File:... [1] - https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNACR801.pdf https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNACR801.pdf [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
anm89 4y ago
I think these statistics are all BS. If you took away all of the game playing involved in defining poverty and then measured the total number of people in the world living in poverty after our massive population growth over the last decades, you will find that the sum of human misery due to poverty is by far the highest it has ever been and is only increasing. But this way a bunch of self righteous people like Gates and Pinkerton can play statistical games and say everything is great. No, it's great for them.
- soared 4y ago
  I’m not sure what this comment is saying? Poverty as a percentage of population has steadily declined globally, same with starvation, etc. 70 years ago 50% of the world lived in extreme poverty, today it’s 11%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-living-in-extreme-poverty-cost-of-basic-needs?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-livin... The population in 1950 was 2.5 billion, so 1.25 billion living in extreme poverty. Todays population is 7.6 billion, so 840 million living in extreme poverty. Undernourishment has the sametrend, data once 1991: https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_auto:best,f_auto/wp-cms/uploads/2017/09/5-after-years-of-progress-worldwide-hunger-is-once-again.jpg https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_...
sabujp 4y ago
Why does the US need to stick to a 2% inflation rate? India's has exceeded 5% for decades (https://www.worlddata.info/asia/india/inflation-rates.php#:~:text=During%20the%20observation%20period%20from,year%20inflation%20rate%20was%206.5%25 https://www.worlddata.info/asia/india/inflation-rates.php#:~....). Indian stock market shows no signs of recession. If you held since 1990 (or inception) (data from tv https://www.tradingview.com/x/rGnAJxlH/ https://www.tradingview.com/x/rGnAJxlH/) : Ethereum +9110% India NIFTY50 +6059% Bitcoin +5566% Nasdaq100 +4705% Shanghai SSE Composite +2307% NIFTY100 +1709% SPX S&P 500 +908% SSE50 +227% SSE100 +67%
- surement 4y ago
  > Why does the US need to stick to a 2% inflation rate? Because high inflation means the money in your bank account becomes worthless at an exponential pace.
  - stubish 4y ago
    Which encourages investment and spending, stimulating the economy, rather than letting money sit idle.
    - surement 4y ago
      not everyone wants to actively invest their money, "spend/invest your money or lose it" is a pretty shitty attitude
      - sabujp 4y ago
        Wherever you have "high" inflation you have bank fixed deposit rates to match. Do you know what the FD rate is for major banks in India say for a 1 year FD (CD)?
      - msworddebugger 4y ago
        It’s the reality. Money is an abstraction over value. You provide value to get money, you spend money receive value. Some value is provided by nature (clean air, wild berries, etc.) and is therefore priceless. However, most value is created by applying energy and human attention to base inputs. Money is not a battery for work in the physics sense, or for work in the labor sense. If you earn money through labor today, there is no guarantee that there will be someone tomorrow willing or able to do the same labor you did for the same money. Humans want to believe in stored value (see bitcoiers, goldbugs), but the reality is the majority of value in the world is delivered by systems that must be continually operated such as energy grids, water systems, retailers, internet infrastructure providers, farms, and factories. There is nothing that guarantees these systems will exist tomorrow except for the efforts or regular people like you and me, so there is nothing that guarantees that your money will be worth anything tomorrow except for the belief that everyone will keep showing up and trying.
Qtips87 4y ago
- ginger2016 4y ago
  This opinion is offensive. India is a functioning democracy. Your claim is that the people who vote are lower caste and upper caste won’t vote hence democracy is invalid. Are you suggesting democracy is only valid if upper caste people vote?
  - soared 4y ago
    He’s claiming the votes are valid, but the votes do not translate to outcomes like they do in a democracy like the US because governmental power is still controlled by upper castes.
  - kodyo 4y ago
    He seems to be suggesting that upper caste people don't need or care about democracy, which is true of all democracies.
  - Qtips87 4y ago
    What I am saying is that upper caste don't need to vote because they have complete control of the country. Democracy confers power to the people because you would assume people who vote can affect policies to their favor but this is not the case for the people who vote in India. They are totally disenfranchised and marginalized.
    - eldaisfish 4y ago
      the accurate statement is that a small slice of India’s upper castes have control. They dominate many sectors but you seem to assume that caste and economic class are interchangeable. they are not although there is a strong correlation due to generational wealth.
- eldaisfish 4y ago
  While the first sentence is correct, the rest is just nonsense based on misinterpretations. What evidence do you have that voting is largely lower caste? If anything, the voting system in India is among the best, most transparent and most accessible in the world and that is really something amazing. Beyond voting, India is largely an electoral autocracy and their idea of “democracy” is really stretching the definition so you are accurate there.
itspi 4y ago
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 before becoming a federal republic. Poverty was not widespread uniformly over the subcontinent. Over-reliance on agriculture and lack of trade meant factors like climate patterns disproportionately affected people in the lower social order. Government definitely played a role in establishing energy infrastructure, educational institutions, introducing healthcare schemes and before that, smart people played an even bigger role with the constitution. India's growth can be traced to a small list of landmark decisions which caused chain reactions. - 1950 Constitution and enforcement by institutions - 1954 Midday Meal Scheme - 1956 Non-Aligned Movement - 1961 Green Revolution - 1970 Operation Flood - 1991 Economic liberalisation Looking back, just liberty guaranteed by Constitution wouldn't have worked because of the caste system. I can add more if someone's interested. - itspi
- newyankee 4y ago
  You missed the Green revolution somewhere around 1967 I think. Millions would've died without it.
- agileAlligator 4y ago
  I would argue that India's present success is in spite of the government, not because of it. The sectors that have seen the most success in India, namely the telecom, IT and services industries, were also those that were the least regulated (because our politicians weren't smart enough to even begin to comprehend technology to regulate it before it really took off in a big way). As for the being a nation state part, sometimes I think we would have been better off in an EU type situation rather than being one large entity.
  - ajyotirmay 4y ago
    > As for the being a nation state part, sometimes I think we would have been better off in an EU type situation rather than being one large entity. I have the same idea. But I'm not very sure about it, specially because our divide has been the main cause of Britishers colonizing us. An united single state gives us much more resources to function properly and defend our interest against neighbors like Pakistan & China. I could be wrong though, as EU seems to be a good example of governance
RGamma 4y ago
If this plays out the same like it has in the mature economies since neoliberalism then whelp, our biosphere's done for...
synergy20 4y ago
Per my observation over the years, India immigrants are unique at hi-tech job market, when one India became a manager, over one or two years, all his team is pretty much filled up with people from India, this is unseen in other ethnic groups like Chinese, Japanese, or any other races. I can not stop thinking if they violated Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws in US.
- npinterview 4y ago
  India is 1/5 of the world and IT is the very best way up for millions of Indians. The talent pool is generally over represented by Indians. I have been rejected a few times by HR (western) for not being a cultural fit. Indian managers do not generally have the same problem, network can be a better explanation.
- praz4HN 4y ago
  Sounds suspiciously like anecdata...
  - MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
    I've heard this before. So now you've got two anecdata.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- koshergweilo 4y ago
  That's very interesting because my boss is Indian and he hired only one other Indian person out of like ten new hires over the years. Then again, my company does have a lot of diversity and inclusion folks looking over the hiring process, so either D&I in my company is unusually effective or your anecdote is just an anecdote. Maybe we shouldn't be painting millions of people with the same brush because of some patterns our brains happened to notice
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  Isn't it the same phenomenon as hiring alumni from your graduated school ? I've anecdotally seen it happen again and again with the universities of the recruiting managers being overly represented in the candidate pool. To note, Indians have a closer affinity to english putting them in an interesting position when moving to the US/UK (where I suppose you live). That affects wether the immigrant pool has a pretty normal social distribution or if the people getting out of their country are also used to getting out of their comfort zones. Japanese are specially affected by this, and workers that decided to go abroad will be less flocking into disporia communities.
speakspokespok 4y ago
A roommate in college was from a small rural village in Vietnam and a first gen college student. It took his entire extended family to pay the cost of tuition (international student rates). At the age of 18 he was putting in 60 -70 hours a week to his studies, as the responsibility he felt to his family to earn that sacrifice was overwhelming and less than an a perfect score visibly upset him. Not knowing any better I once said 'but you got a 3.9...', his reply was 'My father skips meals for me!'.
- kupopuffs 4y ago
  Sheesh!!
- haltingproblem 4y ago
  Kudos to father and son.
- pseudostem 4y ago
  Someone's chopping onions. I feel I'm faking it everytime I read something like this. As a human interest story. I'd like to know more if you're okay to share. How is he doing now?
29athrowaway 4y ago
India superpower by the next -2 years.
- peanuty1 4y ago
  Indian government institutions like the police are too corrupt.
Pmop 4y ago
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?
- peanuty1 4y ago
  > Also, how did India get to have so many people? Extremely high fertility rates.
  - willwinger 4y ago
    Weather is an underrated reason. India perhaps has the best suited weather conditions for humans to thrive. 80% or more of the land have non-extreme weather
- dartharva 4y ago
  India has always had so many people relative to the rest of the world. I don't think there is any point in history since the bronze age where India and China weren't the most populous places in the world.
  - rocknor 4y ago
    It's sad to see how many people don't know this simple fact. India and China actually have a smaller share of the world population now (around 1/3). In most of human history it was bigger [1] It would've been even smaller if it wasn't for the devastating consequences of European imperialism. These countries were left in a piss poor state, lack of education and healthcare etc, resulting in a long period of high birth rates with exponential growth. Check the graph below [2] you can clearly where most damage happened, during the main occupation period (1850s to 1950s). Britain had falling birth rates (prosperity) but they were constantly high in India (poverty). Birth rates have been on a steep decline only after independence. Yet empire apologists somehow claim that it was a net good for India :) [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-by-country https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-by-country [2] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$filter$dimensions$country$country$/$in@=ind&=gbr;;;;;;&encoding$y$data$concept=children_per_woman_total_fertility&space@=country&=time;;&scale$type=linear&domain:null&zoomed:null;;;;;;&chart-type=linechart&url=v1 https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...
sddat 4y ago
I wonder how much of the poverty can be still traced back to the British East India Company
- fakedang 4y ago
  A ton. My great-grandfather was an indentured laborer in Malaya. My great-great-grandfather's family properties were seized by the British Raj, and many of his relatives and family imprisoned after a rebellion. Our family has not been able to recover from that up until my father's and uncles' generation, when many of them were able to go abroad (mostly the Middle East). On the other hand, on my mother's side, many of her grandfather's businesses were forcefully nationalized in the few years after Indian independence. Funnily enough, life has been good so far for our extended family. We have 4 dollar billionaires who have extensive properties in the UK today. And one of them owns a stake in the British EIC.
rishav_sharan 4y ago
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 stupid ways to measure it. https://www.drishtiias.com/to-the-points/paper3/poverty-estimation-in-india https://www.drishtiias.com/to-the-points/paper3/poverty-esti... Added to this is the shenanigans that our politicians play, where they may just lower the poverty line to declare a victory over it https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13450959 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13450959
- nicbou 4y ago
  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
  - tr1ll10nb1ll 4y ago
    Depends if you plan to order takeout from an acceptable place or just “get something” like others seem to be suggesting. And, yes, it does feel less than a dollar if you choose the acceptable option.
  - tock 4y ago
    Huh you can easily get breakfast for 40 Rs. Even in Bangalore.
  - ArtixFox 4y ago
    thats enough for a 1 time meal of chhole bhature
  - parnolverizer 4y ago
    Bro . what are you talking about . I live in BTM, Bangalore and I can get a nice masala dosa for 30rs where I live . or I can get 8 idlies . enough to last me the whole day if I really needed it to . 40rs can get you a lot if you know where to look .
perfecthjrjth 4y ago
In states such as Andhra and Telangana, there is a public distribution scheme, which supplies subsidized rice and cooking oil for a long time, at least since 1985. Even in 1985, they supplied 1 kilo rice for 2 rupees--this price is kept that way even today. Families get like 25 kilos per month. For many, that is a savior, even though this rice is not of quality (like sona masuri, basmati). However, it is tasty when the rice is freshly cooked and hot. After PV Narsimrao's reforms, thanks to IT and service sectors, many people are able to get out of this dependency. In South India, every small village has many people working in Chennai, Hyd, Bangalore, Pune for many IT companies, etc. In Late 90's and early 2000's, even if you were a M.Tech graduate from IITs in chemical engg/civil engg/mech engg, Companies like Infosys/TCS did not hire such people. Today, same companies go to a third rate private engineering colleges, hire a lot of people for jobs. Now, you see a lot of migration from the North to the south--to work as carpenters, electricians, etc. Also, population growth is kind of slowed in the south--at most two kids per couple.
- boruto 4y ago
  The public distribution scheme is riddled with inefficiency and corruption. My family is one beneficiary being below poverty line, You had to entertain the worst of lot, the local corporator, the PDS contractor so you get your PDS every month. There was also no fixed date by when it would be present, Most of the times the contractors are cheaters who replace that rice for a worse quality of rice(Almost always the grain in small) I can promise you, That the 2 rupees rice is not tasty. It's horrible, It was not 25 kilo per month, If I remember correctly it was around 4 kilo per person per month till bjp came to power. BTW, It was started by late CM of AP, N.T.R. Direct money transfer is a better option every single time.
maverickmax90 4y ago
People have lifted themselves up...not some company or country. So kudos to you guys, gals.
thelittleone 4y ago
I really love India, have been visiting for tech business for over 20 years. I've found it to be one of the toughest countries to do business. I'd be more physically and mentally drained at the end of each day. And I'd fly out with a huge to do list. Yet there has been many heartening observations along the way. I saw a poor woman go up to the window of the frequent flyer lounge kitchen, she placed with her hands out, and the staff returned and gave her a bundle of eggs. She was so grateful. While stuck in a jam traveling between meetings, slums lined the side of the road, three kids under 5, no clothes, covered in filth, hitting a stone around with a stick with huge smiles... happiness. And last night on the way home in Mumbai I see a father and son on a dark street intersection with almost nobody around. The father laid out a tarp and the under 5 year old son was hopping and dancing around taking shoes out of the sack and placing them neatly in pairs. And then the little jobs to help people. The chaiwala and the lift attendant. And well... the food! Thank you India.
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  If anyone wants to “experience” some of this, check out the book “A Fine Balance” by Rohinton Mistry.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  Its a fantastic place to 'grow up' from whining western spoiled kid into mature adult, to get some grip on how real world is, unfair, cruel, harsh, but also amazingly beautiful. The quickest and by far best way to do this is backpacking all around, taking slow public transport, sleeping cheap, eating cheap where locals eat etc. I've spent like 500$ per month there in 2010. Yes there may be unpleasant bowel issues but after weeks you will come back a slightly better human being, and memories and experiences will be part of your personality. Best parts are usually random interactions with anybody out there, asking for directions and ending up eating dinner with their family, haggling with rickshaws, seeing how untouchable caste lives, feeling the intense heat of burning bodies in front of me on Manikarnika ghat in Varanasi... I could go on and on for very long time. I've done in my previous life 2x 3 months backpacking like that, just big fat lonely planet book and deciding what to do and where to go next on the spot. Everybody from west we met was doing exactly this, just time varied between few weeks to few years. Felt like being in completely different universe, friends and family back home just distant dream of a dream. Both times it also felt as spending few decades there. And oh boy did it change me for the better, even I could see it.
1995moz 4y ago
One of the best comments I came across do describe India (doesn't matter if it isn't original): "India is a place that disappoints both an optimist and a pessimist at the same time.
tthun 4y ago
Don't see this attributed but one of the biggest "right to work" initiative called probably had lot to do with this "National Rural Employment Guarantee Act". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act,_2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guar...
Animats 4y ago
Of course, India gained over 300M people in the last 15 years.
coffeeblack 4y ago
Foreign investment, technology transfer, and trade did. Which is why safe international trade routes and open markets are so important.
sidjor 4y ago
And then there is the hard part of moving up the GDP per capita. What do you think it would take to go from India current level of $2,277 to China level of $12,556 to a Singapore level of $72,794 (US is $69,287)?
- alenrozac 4y ago
  I guess to China's 12k having a communist party, and to Singapore's 73k not a having communist party?
known 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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aboveandbeyond1 4y ago
Hopefully they grow to the point where they can have some geopolitical retribution from colonialism
aboveandbeyond1 4y ago
Hopefully they elevate themselves to the point where they can get some geopolitical retribution for the euro colonialism that destroyed the country
lupire 4y ago
If a subsistence farmer eating good he grows, becomes a subsistence worker who get paid to buy food, is he reported had "less poverty" because he has more cash flow, even if he ends up with the same daily food?
taylodl 4y ago
And how much carbon did it take to do it? That's the question we're not asking enough when considering lowering our carbon footprint. Which is why it's been a devilish problem to solve.

705 points by cryoz 4y ago

Technically, India did not do this. The people lifted themselves out of poverty because, finally, India‘s government had granted them enough freedom to pursue their happiness.

dc-programmer 4y ago
Economic freedom follows rule of law. And enforcing rule of law is not a passive activity. Free markets are only possible when governments take an active and benevolent role in society
jimbokun 4y ago
Doesn't "India" include the Indian people?
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  What are you going to suggest next, a company consists of employees and a chair is made of atoms? To neoliberalism, Countries and Companies are like the ghosts. They have a will of their own, they are immaterial and can't be pinned down. Together with the omnipotent and omnibenevolent Invisible Hand they form the Trinity and Haunt the stock market. If there is a recession, it is never a structural problem in the market, it is always because the consumers have sinned.

imwillofficial 4y ago

Go India!

crocwrestler 4y ago

Just think of all the elderly demented Americans that got scammed out of their life savings to pay for that

known 4y ago

Proven 4y ago

spaceman_2020 4y ago

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.

piva00 4y ago
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.
- bergenty 4y ago
  I think the difference is India is a major startup hub that mostly caters to the local market so the effort to shift to more resilient income streams not completely dependent on the global market are underway, something Brazil did not do.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Entirely possible India hits a lean phase and stays stuck where it is. Truth be told, everything from infrastructure to basic law and order are far behind even a “middle income trap” country like Thailand. Too early to pat ourselves on the back.
  - mayama 4y ago
    And recent focus on manufacturing. New govt is heavily pushing local manufacturing(atmanirbhar bharat) for last 8 years. Progress is already being felt in some areas, for example in smartphone manufacturing India went from nothing to #2 in world in those years. They are now targeting more phone phone supply chains like pcb, modems etc. and other consumer electronics too. https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/india-now-2nd-largest-mobile-handset-manufacturer-in-the-world-says-amitabh-kant-71643607326675.html https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/india-now-2nd-larg...

3qz 4y ago

seibelj 4y ago

[flagged]

brosinante 4y ago
Didn't China (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...) and the USSR (https://borgenproject.org/tag/poverty-in-the-former-soviet-union/ https://borgenproject.org/tag/poverty-in-the-former-soviet-u...) do similarly?
- epistasis 4y ago
  Most communists and socialists will refer to both the USSR and China as capitalist projects on accelerated timelines. They were trying to speed-run from feudalism, through capitalism, to communism. At least that's what comes up when you mention the problems that these countries have.
- AnnikaL 4y ago
  Your second link refers to poverty being reduced after the fall of communism, when former Soviet states instituted capitalist reforms.
  - throwaway4good 4y ago
    There was a massive drop in living standards in the former Soviet Union after the introduction of capitalism in the 90es. Average life expectancy dropped something like 10 years, corresponding to millions of dead.
    - kurisufag 4y ago
      >There was a massive drop in living standards that tends to happen when the government runs resources down to near-zero, forcing the new system to start from scratch. had the conversion occurred earlier, when the USSR was still a reasonably successful state, I suspect it would have gone nicer.

aerovistae 4y ago

Interested in comments from anyone who lives in India or has experience/familiarity with it as to whether reality on the ground matches the rosy picture painted in the article.

abhinavm 4y ago
It is true. A lot has to do with the reforms of 1991-96. It is only when you think back that you realise how bad the situation was back then and how much had changed.
aravindgp 4y ago
India did make progress in lifting poverty. The numbers wary according to context but yes in absolute numbers India did make significant progress. Most of it is done by IT and pharma industry.
TuringNYC 4y ago
Firstly, thanks for posting this. Everything done to help alleviate poverty is wonderful, no matter how it is achieved. I'm American, but of Indian origin. Our family visited many major cities in India when I was a child (early 90s) and it was heartbreaking. We just kept wondering -- how does anyone begin to fix poverty that is so vast? We gave a lot of charity (esp schooling support) over the years but it always seemed like just scratching the surface of a vast problem. We havent been back since -- but i'd say every family helped is a positive step. Solutions do not need to be 100% comprehensive at the start. I look forward to more economic success for the people of India, and for people everywhere.
as1mov 4y ago
I can give me 2 cents (or paisa hah), apologies if it gets a little sentimental, I am drunk. Looks like I've ascended on the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Grew up in a poor family with my dad as the sole earner taking care of my mother and 3 kids. Mum used to do minor clothes repair work for neighbours for some extra money, but it wasn't much. One of my first memories is waddling along to the ration shop (cheap subsidized government shops) with my mother to buy rice and kerosene for cooking. Things were hard for quite a while (I was about 12 or 13), it didn't really change until my oldest sibling got a job at Infosys after finishing university. Now that I look back on it, what they were paying him wasn't much, but for us it was a life changer. We could afford daily essentials without any hassle. No longer we needed to buy things on credit from the grocery stores, no longer we were worried about not being able to pay the electricity bills at the end of the month. It did change the trajectory of our life dramatically, as it allowed me and my other sibling to afford university. I did a bachelors in Computer Science and eventually managed to move to Europe for work after a few years. We are in a much better position than we were 15 years ago. I know people here tend to look down on these cheap curry-consultancies for their dogshit services but at the other end of the line there are real humans too. Same dreams and ambitions as you do. It's true that these companies pay their actual employees peanuts and treat them like shit, but sometimes that's good enough when the baseline of what life gave you to begin with was wayyyy less. This is just anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt, but this was a similar story for many of my friends from childhood. It's a little funny that people here assume that everyone on this forum is some FAANG engineer earning $400k in SF, there's also a small section of us little people hanging out in the corners :)

joenot443 4y ago

Do millennial and gen-z Indians have a similarly skeptical view towards capitalism held by so many young people in NA and the EU? I had a friend tell me the other day that I couldn't be anti-racist if I wasn't anti-capitalist, because capitalism is by inherently racist. Ever since 2018 or so it seems as if anti-capitalism has become part of the mainstream progressive Western viewpoint, while I don't remember that being the case in the 2000s. Are these views held around the world, or do I just have a very well-selected sample?

wiseowise 4y ago
Have you tried leaving home and touching grass? Because everything you‘ve wrote doesn’t make any sense.
- joenot443 4y ago
  Which part, specifically, confused you? Was it 'well-selected sample'? Was it the notion of anti-racism? Neither of these are terms I coined, but they're fairly well defined in my social groups. I'm happy to clarify any topics you're unfamiliar with.
xmprt 4y ago
I think India is already quite socialist to begin with so anti-capitalism isn't a very strong sentiment there. There's also a lot less centralization and fewer monopolies. I probably shopped at my local small business much more often than I went to a big box store in India whereas in the US, I can't remember the last time I was able to conveniently do business at a small business.
abdullahkhalids 4y ago
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 capitalist firm made of people who said they were distinct from you, and superior (please note 'race' was invented by Europeans). So, hate for capitalism is pretty old in certain parts of the world.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Such an awesome accomplishment. Also, it’s interestingly a huge black eye to the CCP: news of this Indian accomplishment will be censored in China, because it proves that nations can progress without forced-sterilization/-abortion/-1-child-policy/authoritarianism/ etc.

ardit33 4y ago
I think this is a world wide trend as well. Humanity is progressing with every generation. (this is true even in Africa). Some countries progressing faster though, (China being one of them).
- Shoue 4y ago
  In absolute terms, yes we are seeing advancements in tech/medicine and the like and that will always help more and more people, but in more relative economic terms it's questionable whether the gap between poorer nations and richer ones is actually closing, because there is economic evidence that the gap is actually widening: > Net Resource Transfers (NRT) for all developing countries have been mostly large and negative since the early 1980s, indicating sustained and significant outflows from the developing world (see graph below) https://gfintegrity.org/press-release/new-report-on-unrecorded-capital-flight-finds-developing-countries-are-net-creditors-to-the-rest-of-the-world/ https://gfintegrity.org/press-release/new-report-on-unrecord...
richard___ 4y ago
Why do so many people on HN hate on China? What's your relationship with Chinese people in your personal life?
- _zamorano_ 4y ago
  It's the double standards, you know. Not being able to vote, and so... While the US and its war machine has lost track of destroyed countries in this last decades in an Orwellian permanent conflict. But the bad guys are the chinese, who hasn't been involved in a war in 40 years.

achow 4y ago

The UNDP Report (pdf link) https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/2022-10/2022mpireportenpdf.pdf https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/2022-10/2...

factsarelolz 4y ago

Thanks to the United States of America wether it be through legal or illegal means.

verisimilitude 4y ago
Hmm. If you are saying we are all interconnected, relying on the diverse resources, products, and gifts from around this small planet to do the things we want to do, e.g. care for our sick, advance the common good, protect the vulnerable, provide stable sources of food _so that_ our global population can grow in a safe, equitable, sustainable manner toward lives full of fulfillment and wonder, away from subsistence living that steals time and health and hope from those stuck with no other choice, then, yes. But if you mean the US should take credit, then, no.
- factsarelolz 4y ago
  The US has injected untold billions into the Indian market through off shoring phone support. India has made hundreds of millions of dollar scamming America's most vulnerable population.
  - another_devy 4y ago
    US has not injected billions into India! Capitalist companies trying to find cheaper and disposable labour has done it. Of course the US Government police allows that but the policy is there because of these companies not other way around. > scamming America’s most vulnerable population Nothing from that goes to Government taxes or public benefits. These people are not out of poverty by scamming. please try not to down punch some positive news from “Third world countries” if you don’t have any constructive criticism
    - steve76 4y ago
      [dead]
  - throwaway123x 4y ago

freeCandy 4y ago

https://archive.md/9UPfu https://archive.md/9UPfu

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago

How wonderful! In the influx of bad news it stands out as an awesome accomplishment. Congratulations, India!

cuteboy19 4y ago

The move away from socialist economic policy has been a great boon for the Indian people. But a lot needs to be done still to root out the corruption and wastage of the socialist days

damagednoob 4y ago

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.

bparsons 4y ago
These are two very different definitions. The international definition of extreme poverty means living on less than $1.90 a day. It is the basic ability to survive. The domestic poverty threshold definition in the UK is whether or not you are able to maintain a fairly stable middle class standard of living.
DimitriPetrova 4y ago
Apparently the Multidimensional Poverty Measure is defined as; An index that captures the percentage of households in a country deprived along three dimensions of well-being – monetary poverty, education, and basic infrastructure services – to provide a more complete picture of poverty. There's also the Multidimensional Poverty Index which has an alternate definition
- jimbokun 4y ago
  But is there a greater percentage of people in UK deprived along any of those dimensions?
  - deathgripsss 4y ago
    It must be relative to that nation. From my experience the UK IS becoming an incredibly segregated nation along economic lines. I don't find it hard to believe that 22% of the populace are in relative poverty. This is very different from absolute poverty, of which I'm sure India has a higher percentage.
    - formerkrogemp 4y ago

InTheArena 4y ago

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.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
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.
- anuvrat1 4y ago
  It's quite easy to see, the early growth is hard carried by export of manufacturing from China and services from India. Yes, you can say, this wouldn't be possible without Chinese government infrastructure and incentives push and Indian government early push for premiere education, but that would have been useless without customers that are global markets.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj
- jojobas 4y ago
  Because they essentially exported their poverty to the first world.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    Poverty in the first world isn’t real poverty.

newsclues 4y ago

Hasn't there been recent news about toxic pollution in the region? What good is lifting people out of poverty, if they are lifted out of poverty and placed in a toxic urban environment?

abhinavm 4y ago
A major source of pollution is stubble burning, which is of rural origin.
Choco31415 4y ago
That article was specifically about India’s capital. It’s also possible that problem can be fixed in the future, so people are lifted into a clean urban environment. Also, last I recalled, London faced similar issues before and is in a much healthier state nowadays.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  It's also more about geography. Had there been no Himalayas, the problem would be much less acute
gandalfgeek 4y ago
This line of reasoning needs to be stopped. If you haven't lived or grown up through India's pre-capitalist era you have no idea what you're talking about. Ask any Indian about it and I think they'll tell you that urban pollution is a small price to pay for the distance they've come in terms of overall quality of life and wealth.
dotnet00 4y ago
If they aren't in poverty you have more options for reducing pollution. When someone is so poor that they can just barely feed themselves and their family, you can't realistically expect them to do much to reduce pollution. You can't really enforce pollution regulation because they can't pay fines and tossing them in prison only makes things worse. When they're able to afford some luxuries they're capable of devoting more thought towards their environment and can afford to spend more for more environmentally friendly living.

gandalfgeek 4y ago

I grew up in India in the 90s, saw first hand the transition from the disastrous socialism of the Nehru era to open markets, capitalism and deregulation. (The end of "license raj".) It started with PV Narasimha Rao as PM and Manmohan Singh as his finance minister in the early 90s. Thankfully Singh himself had a fruitful tenure as PM later. All it took for India to take off was the shackles of govt control to come off. Sad to see that the lesson hasn't been learned and even today there is a strong strain of socialist reasoning calling for more govt control on markets. Concrete example: before deregulation one had to pull strings (e.g. have family or friends in the civil service) to get a phone to your house, then wait a few months after approval to actually get the wire to your house. That was also the era that there were two channels on TV, both state controlled (Doordarshan) that broadcast maybe 5-6 hrs per day.

ganeshkrishnan 4y ago
>both state controlled (Doordarshan) that broadcast maybe 5-6 hrs per day. We just had one channel DD1 It would start in the evening around 7 pm I think with this tune https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-7JmGB9BRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-7JmGB9BRA
softveda 4y ago
The license raj is still there for business, except maybe some sectors like tech startups. Yes there has been improvements in citizens life like mobile phones etc. But official harassment and bribery is as prevalent as before. Want to get a passport issued or renewed have to pay Rs 500 to the police. Just last week a mother and her kids died as they were turned away from a govt hospital as they could not show the Aadhar id card. Read the Indian news and this kind of cases as their every week.
- sbmthakur 4y ago
  I wonder which city this would be where you still need to bribe the police for getting a passport. I got mine in 2015 and the process was hassle-free. But this was in a tier-1 city, so my experience might be an exception.

jialutu 4y ago

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/ 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 India has been trending downwards). Does anyone who is more knowledgeable on this please explain?

ArtixFox 4y ago
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
rajeshp1986 4y ago
The reason for this is the population is so large that absolute numbers will be still very high. There are still millions of people that need to be lifted.
i67vw3 4y ago
That is a bogus index. Even the government denied it's reporting https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/global-hunger-index-india-rank-107-government-11463151.html 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-record-785-million-tonnes-2021-22-traders-2022-04-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-wheat-exports-hit...

atentaten 4y ago

> India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN At what costs? I've heard this narrative before as it has happened in many Western countries and it is continuing to happen in China. I don't have the answer, but I always wonder about the costs of lifting so many people out of poverty, for example, there could be costs related to: environment, quality of life, traditions and values, mental health, etc. Along with that thought experiment, I wonder how did they get into poverty in the first place. A lot of areas that are now declared as poverty zones today may have been poor in the past, but were self-sufficient and self sustaining.

feyman_r 4y ago
>> there could be costs related to: environment, quality of life, traditions and values, mental health, etc. quality of life, mental health: are you implying folks in poverty were perhaps happier before? If so, you're probably not familiar with life in poverty. environment: while there are larger issues that could likely surface (more consumption of electricity, additional waste etc.), the environment in which they lived most likely improved (sanitation, medical help, gas instead of wood-burning stove, cow-dung as fuel, water-borne diseases); this comes from personal experience having lived close to one of the largest slums a long, long time ago.
vhanda 4y ago
> I wonder how did they get into poverty in the first place. A lot of areas that are now declared as poverty zones today may have been poor in the past, but were self-sufficient and self sustaining. Well, when the British left in 1945, roughly 15% of the country was literate [0], now that is up to 77% [0]. From here [1], it seems that poverty was around 45% of the population (361 million). It also says the rate varied based on how the monsoon season went, which makes sense for a primarily agrarian society, especially one which had to import food to meet their needs till 1965 (roughly). so, basically, the British didn't leave India in a good place. See [2] [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India#/media/File:Literacy_India_1901_2011_Detail.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India#/media/File:... [1] - https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNACR801.pdf https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNACR801.pdf [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

anm89 4y ago

I think these statistics are all BS. If you took away all of the game playing involved in defining poverty and then measured the total number of people in the world living in poverty after our massive population growth over the last decades, you will find that the sum of human misery due to poverty is by far the highest it has ever been and is only increasing. But this way a bunch of self righteous people like Gates and Pinkerton can play statistical games and say everything is great. No, it's great for them.

soared 4y ago
I’m not sure what this comment is saying? Poverty as a percentage of population has steadily declined globally, same with starvation, etc. 70 years ago 50% of the world lived in extreme poverty, today it’s 11%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-living-in-extreme-poverty-cost-of-basic-needs?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-livin... The population in 1950 was 2.5 billion, so 1.25 billion living in extreme poverty. Todays population is 7.6 billion, so 840 million living in extreme poverty. Undernourishment has the sametrend, data once 1991: https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_auto:best,f_auto/wp-cms/uploads/2017/09/5-after-years-of-progress-worldwide-hunger-is-once-again.jpg https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_...

sabujp 4y ago

Why does the US need to stick to a 2% inflation rate? India's has exceeded 5% for decades (https://www.worlddata.info/asia/india/inflation-rates.php#:~:text=During%20the%20observation%20period%20from,year%20inflation%20rate%20was%206.5%25 https://www.worlddata.info/asia/india/inflation-rates.php#:~....). Indian stock market shows no signs of recession. If you held since 1990 (or inception) (data from tv https://www.tradingview.com/x/rGnAJxlH/ https://www.tradingview.com/x/rGnAJxlH/) : Ethereum +9110% India NIFTY50 +6059% Bitcoin +5566% Nasdaq100 +4705% Shanghai SSE Composite +2307% NIFTY100 +1709% SPX S&P 500 +908% SSE50 +227% SSE100 +67%

surement 4y ago
> Why does the US need to stick to a 2% inflation rate? Because high inflation means the money in your bank account becomes worthless at an exponential pace.
- stubish 4y ago
  Which encourages investment and spending, stimulating the economy, rather than letting money sit idle.
  - surement 4y ago
    not everyone wants to actively invest their money, "spend/invest your money or lose it" is a pretty shitty attitude
    - sabujp 4y ago
      Wherever you have "high" inflation you have bank fixed deposit rates to match. Do you know what the FD rate is for major banks in India say for a 1 year FD (CD)?
    - msworddebugger 4y ago
      It’s the reality. Money is an abstraction over value. You provide value to get money, you spend money receive value. Some value is provided by nature (clean air, wild berries, etc.) and is therefore priceless. However, most value is created by applying energy and human attention to base inputs. Money is not a battery for work in the physics sense, or for work in the labor sense. If you earn money through labor today, there is no guarantee that there will be someone tomorrow willing or able to do the same labor you did for the same money. Humans want to believe in stored value (see bitcoiers, goldbugs), but the reality is the majority of value in the world is delivered by systems that must be continually operated such as energy grids, water systems, retailers, internet infrastructure providers, farms, and factories. There is nothing that guarantees these systems will exist tomorrow except for the efforts or regular people like you and me, so there is nothing that guarantees that your money will be worth anything tomorrow except for the belief that everyone will keep showing up and trying.

Qtips87 4y ago

ginger2016 4y ago
This opinion is offensive. India is a functioning democracy. Your claim is that the people who vote are lower caste and upper caste won’t vote hence democracy is invalid. Are you suggesting democracy is only valid if upper caste people vote?
- soared 4y ago
  He’s claiming the votes are valid, but the votes do not translate to outcomes like they do in a democracy like the US because governmental power is still controlled by upper castes.
- kodyo 4y ago
  He seems to be suggesting that upper caste people don't need or care about democracy, which is true of all democracies.
- Qtips87 4y ago
  What I am saying is that upper caste don't need to vote because they have complete control of the country. Democracy confers power to the people because you would assume people who vote can affect policies to their favor but this is not the case for the people who vote in India. They are totally disenfranchised and marginalized.
  - eldaisfish 4y ago
    the accurate statement is that a small slice of India’s upper castes have control. They dominate many sectors but you seem to assume that caste and economic class are interchangeable. they are not although there is a strong correlation due to generational wealth.
eldaisfish 4y ago
While the first sentence is correct, the rest is just nonsense based on misinterpretations. What evidence do you have that voting is largely lower caste? If anything, the voting system in India is among the best, most transparent and most accessible in the world and that is really something amazing. Beyond voting, India is largely an electoral autocracy and their idea of “democracy” is really stretching the definition so you are accurate there.

itspi 4y ago

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 before becoming a federal republic. Poverty was not widespread uniformly over the subcontinent. Over-reliance on agriculture and lack of trade meant factors like climate patterns disproportionately affected people in the lower social order. Government definitely played a role in establishing energy infrastructure, educational institutions, introducing healthcare schemes and before that, smart people played an even bigger role with the constitution. India's growth can be traced to a small list of landmark decisions which caused chain reactions. - 1950 Constitution and enforcement by institutions - 1954 Midday Meal Scheme - 1956 Non-Aligned Movement - 1961 Green Revolution - 1970 Operation Flood - 1991 Economic liberalisation Looking back, just liberty guaranteed by Constitution wouldn't have worked because of the caste system. I can add more if someone's interested. - itspi

newyankee 4y ago
You missed the Green revolution somewhere around 1967 I think. Millions would've died without it.
agileAlligator 4y ago
I would argue that India's present success is in spite of the government, not because of it. The sectors that have seen the most success in India, namely the telecom, IT and services industries, were also those that were the least regulated (because our politicians weren't smart enough to even begin to comprehend technology to regulate it before it really took off in a big way). As for the being a nation state part, sometimes I think we would have been better off in an EU type situation rather than being one large entity.
- ajyotirmay 4y ago
  > As for the being a nation state part, sometimes I think we would have been better off in an EU type situation rather than being one large entity. I have the same idea. But I'm not very sure about it, specially because our divide has been the main cause of Britishers colonizing us. An united single state gives us much more resources to function properly and defend our interest against neighbors like Pakistan & China. I could be wrong though, as EU seems to be a good example of governance

RGamma 4y ago

If this plays out the same like it has in the mature economies since neoliberalism then whelp, our biosphere's done for...

synergy20 4y ago

Per my observation over the years, India immigrants are unique at hi-tech job market, when one India became a manager, over one or two years, all his team is pretty much filled up with people from India, this is unseen in other ethnic groups like Chinese, Japanese, or any other races. I can not stop thinking if they violated Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws in US.

npinterview 4y ago
India is 1/5 of the world and IT is the very best way up for millions of Indians. The talent pool is generally over represented by Indians. I have been rejected a few times by HR (western) for not being a cultural fit. Indian managers do not generally have the same problem, network can be a better explanation.
praz4HN 4y ago
Sounds suspiciously like anecdata...
- MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
  I've heard this before. So now you've got two anecdata.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
koshergweilo 4y ago
That's very interesting because my boss is Indian and he hired only one other Indian person out of like ten new hires over the years. Then again, my company does have a lot of diversity and inclusion folks looking over the hiring process, so either D&I in my company is unusually effective or your anecdote is just an anecdote. Maybe we shouldn't be painting millions of people with the same brush because of some patterns our brains happened to notice
makeitdouble 4y ago
Isn't it the same phenomenon as hiring alumni from your graduated school ? I've anecdotally seen it happen again and again with the universities of the recruiting managers being overly represented in the candidate pool. To note, Indians have a closer affinity to english putting them in an interesting position when moving to the US/UK (where I suppose you live). That affects wether the immigrant pool has a pretty normal social distribution or if the people getting out of their country are also used to getting out of their comfort zones. Japanese are specially affected by this, and workers that decided to go abroad will be less flocking into disporia communities.

speakspokespok 4y ago

A roommate in college was from a small rural village in Vietnam and a first gen college student. It took his entire extended family to pay the cost of tuition (international student rates). At the age of 18 he was putting in 60 -70 hours a week to his studies, as the responsibility he felt to his family to earn that sacrifice was overwhelming and less than an a perfect score visibly upset him. Not knowing any better I once said 'but you got a 3.9...', his reply was 'My father skips meals for me!'.

kupopuffs 4y ago
Sheesh!!
haltingproblem 4y ago
Kudos to father and son.
pseudostem 4y ago
Someone's chopping onions. I feel I'm faking it everytime I read something like this. As a human interest story. I'd like to know more if you're okay to share. How is he doing now?

29athrowaway 4y ago

India superpower by the next -2 years.

peanuty1 4y ago
Indian government institutions like the police are too corrupt.

Pmop 4y ago

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?

peanuty1 4y ago
> Also, how did India get to have so many people? Extremely high fertility rates.
- willwinger 4y ago
  Weather is an underrated reason. India perhaps has the best suited weather conditions for humans to thrive. 80% or more of the land have non-extreme weather
dartharva 4y ago
India has always had so many people relative to the rest of the world. I don't think there is any point in history since the bronze age where India and China weren't the most populous places in the world.
- rocknor 4y ago
  It's sad to see how many people don't know this simple fact. India and China actually have a smaller share of the world population now (around 1/3). In most of human history it was bigger [1] It would've been even smaller if it wasn't for the devastating consequences of European imperialism. These countries were left in a piss poor state, lack of education and healthcare etc, resulting in a long period of high birth rates with exponential growth. Check the graph below [2] you can clearly where most damage happened, during the main occupation period (1850s to 1950s). Britain had falling birth rates (prosperity) but they were constantly high in India (poverty). Birth rates have been on a steep decline only after independence. Yet empire apologists somehow claim that it was a net good for India :) [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-by-country https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-by-country [2] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$filter$dimensions$country$country$/$in@=ind&=gbr;;;;;;&encoding$y$data$concept=children_per_woman_total_fertility&space@=country&=time;;&scale$type=linear&domain:null&zoomed:null;;;;;;&chart-type=linechart&url=v1 https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

sddat 4y ago

I wonder how much of the poverty can be still traced back to the British East India Company

fakedang 4y ago
A ton. My great-grandfather was an indentured laborer in Malaya. My great-great-grandfather's family properties were seized by the British Raj, and many of his relatives and family imprisoned after a rebellion. Our family has not been able to recover from that up until my father's and uncles' generation, when many of them were able to go abroad (mostly the Middle East). On the other hand, on my mother's side, many of her grandfather's businesses were forcefully nationalized in the few years after Indian independence. Funnily enough, life has been good so far for our extended family. We have 4 dollar billionaires who have extensive properties in the UK today. And one of them owns a stake in the British EIC.

rishav_sharan 4y ago

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 stupid ways to measure it. https://www.drishtiias.com/to-the-points/paper3/poverty-estimation-in-india https://www.drishtiias.com/to-the-points/paper3/poverty-esti... Added to this is the shenanigans that our politicians play, where they may just lower the poverty line to declare a victory over it https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13450959 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13450959

nicbou 4y ago
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
- tr1ll10nb1ll 4y ago
  Depends if you plan to order takeout from an acceptable place or just “get something” like others seem to be suggesting. And, yes, it does feel less than a dollar if you choose the acceptable option.
- tock 4y ago
  Huh you can easily get breakfast for 40 Rs. Even in Bangalore.
- ArtixFox 4y ago
  thats enough for a 1 time meal of chhole bhature
- parnolverizer 4y ago
  Bro . what are you talking about . I live in BTM, Bangalore and I can get a nice masala dosa for 30rs where I live . or I can get 8 idlies . enough to last me the whole day if I really needed it to . 40rs can get you a lot if you know where to look .

perfecthjrjth 4y ago

In states such as Andhra and Telangana, there is a public distribution scheme, which supplies subsidized rice and cooking oil for a long time, at least since 1985. Even in 1985, they supplied 1 kilo rice for 2 rupees--this price is kept that way even today. Families get like 25 kilos per month. For many, that is a savior, even though this rice is not of quality (like sona masuri, basmati). However, it is tasty when the rice is freshly cooked and hot. After PV Narsimrao's reforms, thanks to IT and service sectors, many people are able to get out of this dependency. In South India, every small village has many people working in Chennai, Hyd, Bangalore, Pune for many IT companies, etc. In Late 90's and early 2000's, even if you were a M.Tech graduate from IITs in chemical engg/civil engg/mech engg, Companies like Infosys/TCS did not hire such people. Today, same companies go to a third rate private engineering colleges, hire a lot of people for jobs. Now, you see a lot of migration from the North to the south--to work as carpenters, electricians, etc. Also, population growth is kind of slowed in the south--at most two kids per couple.

boruto 4y ago
The public distribution scheme is riddled with inefficiency and corruption. My family is one beneficiary being below poverty line, You had to entertain the worst of lot, the local corporator, the PDS contractor so you get your PDS every month. There was also no fixed date by when it would be present, Most of the times the contractors are cheaters who replace that rice for a worse quality of rice(Almost always the grain in small) I can promise you, That the 2 rupees rice is not tasty. It's horrible, It was not 25 kilo per month, If I remember correctly it was around 4 kilo per person per month till bjp came to power. BTW, It was started by late CM of AP, N.T.R. Direct money transfer is a better option every single time.

maverickmax90 4y ago

People have lifted themselves up...not some company or country. So kudos to you guys, gals.

thelittleone 4y ago

I really love India, have been visiting for tech business for over 20 years. I've found it to be one of the toughest countries to do business. I'd be more physically and mentally drained at the end of each day. And I'd fly out with a huge to do list. Yet there has been many heartening observations along the way. I saw a poor woman go up to the window of the frequent flyer lounge kitchen, she placed with her hands out, and the staff returned and gave her a bundle of eggs. She was so grateful. While stuck in a jam traveling between meetings, slums lined the side of the road, three kids under 5, no clothes, covered in filth, hitting a stone around with a stick with huge smiles... happiness. And last night on the way home in Mumbai I see a father and son on a dark street intersection with almost nobody around. The father laid out a tarp and the under 5 year old son was hopping and dancing around taking shoes out of the sack and placing them neatly in pairs. And then the little jobs to help people. The chaiwala and the lift attendant. And well... the food! Thank you India.

therealdrag0 4y ago
If anyone wants to “experience” some of this, check out the book “A Fine Balance” by Rohinton Mistry.
saiya-jin 4y ago
Its a fantastic place to 'grow up' from whining western spoiled kid into mature adult, to get some grip on how real world is, unfair, cruel, harsh, but also amazingly beautiful. The quickest and by far best way to do this is backpacking all around, taking slow public transport, sleeping cheap, eating cheap where locals eat etc. I've spent like 500$ per month there in 2010. Yes there may be unpleasant bowel issues but after weeks you will come back a slightly better human being, and memories and experiences will be part of your personality. Best parts are usually random interactions with anybody out there, asking for directions and ending up eating dinner with their family, haggling with rickshaws, seeing how untouchable caste lives, feeling the intense heat of burning bodies in front of me on Manikarnika ghat in Varanasi... I could go on and on for very long time. I've done in my previous life 2x 3 months backpacking like that, just big fat lonely planet book and deciding what to do and where to go next on the spot. Everybody from west we met was doing exactly this, just time varied between few weeks to few years. Felt like being in completely different universe, friends and family back home just distant dream of a dream. Both times it also felt as spending few decades there. And oh boy did it change me for the better, even I could see it.

1995moz 4y ago

One of the best comments I came across do describe India (doesn't matter if it isn't original): "India is a place that disappoints both an optimist and a pessimist at the same time.

tthun 4y ago

Don't see this attributed but one of the biggest "right to work" initiative called probably had lot to do with this "National Rural Employment Guarantee Act". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act,_2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guar...

Animats 4y ago

Of course, India gained over 300M people in the last 15 years.

coffeeblack 4y ago

Foreign investment, technology transfer, and trade did. Which is why safe international trade routes and open markets are so important.

sidjor 4y ago

And then there is the hard part of moving up the GDP per capita. What do you think it would take to go from India current level of $2,277 to China level of $12,556 to a Singapore level of $72,794 (US is $69,287)?

alenrozac 4y ago
I guess to China's 12k having a communist party, and to Singapore's 73k not a having communist party?

known 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

aboveandbeyond1 4y ago

Hopefully they grow to the point where they can have some geopolitical retribution from colonialism

aboveandbeyond1 4y ago

Hopefully they elevate themselves to the point where they can get some geopolitical retribution for the euro colonialism that destroyed the country

lupire 4y ago

If a subsistence farmer eating good he grows, becomes a subsistence worker who get paid to buy food, is he reported had "less poverty" because he has more cash flow, even if he ends up with the same daily food?

taylodl 4y ago

And how much carbon did it take to do it? That's the question we're not asking enough when considering lowering our carbon footprint. Which is why it's been a devilish problem to solve.