New Delhi: Pew Research Centre, using Word Bank data, has estimated that the number of poor in India (with income of $2 per day or less in purchasing power parity) has more than doubled to 134 million from 60 million in just a year due to the pandemic induced recession. This means, India is back in a situation to be called a “country of mass poverty” after 45 years.
India dropped one spot to 131 among 189 countries in 2020 human development index, according to a report released by the UNDP. Human development index is the measure of a nation’s health, education, and standards of living.
India is the No. 1 country in the world for open defection, with over 344 million people without regular access to toilets in the country, according to 2017 statistics from the world health organization and UNICEF. If you add up Nos.2 to 10, it still wouldn’t come close to India’s number, showing just how big the problem is there.
Financial woes brought by last year’s coronavirus pandemic have pushed about 32 million Indians out of the middle class, undoing years of economic gains, a report showed on Thursday, while job losses pushed millions into poverty.
The number of Indians in the middle class, or those earning between $10 and $20 a day, shrunk by about 32 million, compared with the number that could have been reached in the absence of a pandemic, the U.S.-based Pew Research Centre said.
A year into the pandemic, the numbers of those in the middle class has shrunk to 66 million, down a third from a pre-pandemic estimate of 99 million, it added.
“India is estimated to have seen a greater decrease in the middle class and a much sharper rise in poverty in the COVID-19 downturn,” the Pew Research Centre said, citing the World Bank’s forecasts of economic growth. Nearly 57 million people had joined the middle income group between 2011 and 2019, it added.
In January last year, the World Bank forecast almost the same level of economic growth for India at 5.8% in 2020.
But nearly a year into the pandemic, the World Bank revised its forecast this January, to a contraction of 9.6% for India and growth of 2% for China.
India faces a second wave of infections in some industrial states, after a decline in cases until early this year, and its tally of 11.47 million is the highest after the United States and Brazil.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has taken steps to support the economy, while projecting a contraction of 8% in the current financial year, which ends this month, before economic growth picks up to about 10% in the next financial year.
The Pew Centre estimated the number of poor people, with incomes of $2 or less each day, has gone up by 75 million as the recession brought by the virus has clawed back years of progress.
A rise of nearly 10% in domestic fuel prices this year, job losses and salary cuts have further hurt millions of households, forcing many people to seek jobs overseas, the report added. Web Desk
