Despite many efforts, India has not become a poverty-free country like China

- The Conundrum of Economics - Dhawal Mehta

- Two-thirds of India's total population still lives in villages

Fr. W. 2005 and Fr. W. In the twenty year period of 2019, India has dramatically reduced the number of people living in poverty. It should be remembered that for this reason, the performance of both governments in the ten years of Congress from 2005 to 2014 and the five years of BJP from 2015 to 2019 has been excellent in the field of economy. During the tenure of both the governments, India's average economic growth rate has been above five percent which can be said to be much higher than America and other European countries. However, our growth rate of over five percent is due to our small GDP base. E.g. If your income is 20,000 per month, if you get an increment of ten percent of it, the amount will be Rs. 2,000, but if a laborer's salary is only Rs. 8,000 and he gets an increment of 15%, his income will increase only by Rs. 1,200, while your income has increased by Rs. 2,000. Thus this is a major limitation of measuring the income of a person, organization or country in percentage terms with two or more different percentage bases (base amounts). Even keeping this limitation in mind, both the governments of India (Manmohan government and Modi government) have preserved and enhanced India's economy.

Number of poor people in the world

is decreasing

According to the latest report of the United Nations which came out on Tuesday, July 11, 2023, 41.5 crore people of the country have come out of poverty in the last 15 years. Here the definition of poverty is used not only on the basis of the average annual income of the family but also includes basic necessities of life such as household amenities, drinking and washing water facilities, access to medical treatment and facilities, access to education and access to electricity etc. If 41.5 crore people have left India in the last ten years according to the definition of multidimensional poverty, India can be considered a poverty-free country like China. But that didn't happen. According to the multidimensional definition of poverty, around 11.8 percent of people in India still live in poverty.

Credit to the brilliant economist Prof. Maan for making the definition of poverty multidimensional in economics. Amartya goes to St. He said not Economic Development Index but instead create Human Development Index.

Rural society

Poverty in India is a major feature of the rural society and not of the urban society of India. 84 percent of the poor we talked about above live in the villages of India. India is still a rural country. According to the 2011 census, two-thirds of India's population (about 67 percent) lives in rural India. While only one-third i.e. 33 percent of the total population lives in its towns and cities. Many writers of Gujarat, the rural life of the village, the deprivation rate is very high in India and that is why the average life expectancy in India is only around 70 years, while it is around 80 years in Japan and all European countries and especially in Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Iceland. Japan is at the top of the world in this regard. Japan's average life expectancy has reached over 85 years.

Two of the most laudable schemes in the Indian economy can be considered: one is the MNREGA scheme started during the Congress tenure which has been continued by the Modi government and the other is Modi's Jan Arogya scheme in which the government will now provide up to ten lakh rupees per family for sickness expenses.