I don’t think there’s a definite correct answer here so I’m posting in IMHO.
How pandemic is poverty in India these days? India used to be the prototypical impoverished nation but that sad honor seems to have been shifted to places like Ethiopia and various Sub-Saharan countries. Have conditions improved for the average Indian since the 1960’s, or even since independence?
I wondered because I recently saw some show on Discover about a “magician” who travels through rural villages and performs “miracles”, which he then reveals as mere trickery, to encourage people away from superstition. In the village shown on the program, the people seemed to be reasonably healthy and adequately fed. They didn’t seem rich by Western standards, but they did seem to be getting by all right.
Similarly, we often hear of technical and customer service jobs going to India, where they can hire people for a fraction of a Western salary. But for the people there who do those jobs, how well can they live on that salary? Say an engineer in India earns only $8000/year, would he be able to live reasonably well on that? Buy a house or at least rent an apartment, go out to eat once in a while, and so forth?
When I was last in India following salaries were appropriate:
Assistent university professor: 8000 rupias per month: +/- €200;
Unskilled labor: 50 rupias per day: +/- €1,25;
A shoepolisher wanted 1 rupia +/- €0,025 per pair of shoes;
A beer in better hotel bar was 200 rupias or +/- €5,00;
javaman: Poverty is still widespread and very serious in India. But the consensus is that the situation has improved somewhat. India has very good data from the early '50’s on. From the report below ( circa 1998 ) it appears that absolute poverty hit an all time high in the late 1960’s, then declined sharply in 1970’s, leveling off by the early 1980’s:
This brief essay ( analyzing the same data as above, but written a couple of years later and focusing specifically on the 1990’s ) indicates continued stagnation during the 1990’s, up until the last couple of years which have seen another signficant decline: