"India Shining": Half of India’s population lives below the poverty line

[Hannah Bell]

According to a new Oxford University study, 55 percent of India’s population of 1.1 billion, or 645 million people, are living in poverty. Using a newly-developed index, the study found that about one-third of the world’s poor live in India...

The Oxford University research also exposed high levels of poverty among India’s oppressed castes and tribal peoples. The poverty level among India’s so-called Scheduled Tribes is 81.4 percent. “The intensity of poverty is also very high among Scheduled Tribes, who are deprived in 59.2 percent of weighted indicators on average,” the study stated. The MPI for Scheduled Castes was 65.8 percent and for Other Backward Castes (OBC) was 58.3 percent.


The figures expose the Congress-led government’s claim that India’s economic growth has been “inclusive”. In fact, successive Indian governments led by Congress and the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) are responsible for economic policies that have boosted the profits of big business and the wealth of a tiny layer at the expense of the working class and rural poor.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/indi-a02.shtml


India: still ruled by the same comprador families that ruled it with the Brits