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A couple of corrections here. IIRC 22.5% is from the 2011 census. According to the world poverty clock, this number in India had dropped to about 4% by 2019, increased again during covid and is back to 4% in 2022. Pakistan and Bangladesh are both at 6% right now. Infact in 2019, India for the first time in more than a century and a half did not have the largest concentration of people living in extreme poverty in the word - Nigeria and then subsequently the DRC stole that crown.

Talking about Pakistan, I had an honest discussion with an old Pakistani colleague of mine. The thing about Pakistan is the inequalities between urban and rural areas are much more pronounced than in India. Pakistan isn't as urbanized as India (which in itself isn't very urbanised), so a lot of the poverty isn't visible for folks living in cities like Lahore, Islamabad and other cities in the Punjab province. The only city where poverty is somewhat visible is in Karachi. Because of this, the city folk who make up only a tiny proportion of Pakistan have no idea of the state of poverty in their country given that their entire city is a bubble unlike in India where only certain sections of cities are bubbles. Multi-dimensional poverty has actually increased in Pakistan with the literacy rate dropping from 60% to 58%. We've to keep in mind that this is a country that was 30% richer than India till the 90s in terms of GDP per capita.

Offcourse, we can't just point to Pakistan to make us feel better. Between states especially, India has one of the highest inequalities in the world. India's richest state - Goa is 10 times richer than India's poorest - Bihar. Even if you take India's richest big state - Haryana, it is 5 times richer than Bihar. Compare that with the US (discounting DC) where the richest state - New York is just over twice as rich as Mississippi or in Brazil (discounting the capital region) where the difference is 3.7 times or 4.4 times in China. Only the EU as a whole has this kind of regional inequality! Unlike in the US where the poorer states have a lower population, in India, the bulk of the poor is concentrated in the Hindi heartland which has the largest as well as the fastest growing population in India. Whatever growth we are seeing in India seems to be powered by a handful of states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and I'm not sure how sustainable this is when states like Bihar seem to be left behind and highly dependent on tax revenue from the richer states.

The world poverty clock data doesn't gel with data used by World Bank, ADB etc.

For e.g. if you see the 2016 figures, India had already dropped to 5.6%.

I can't imagine a drop from 22.5% to 5.6% in 5 years (2011 to 2016). It would have been very visible.

I assume they are using a very different poverty line as compared to other orgs.

Also, this says extreme poverty in 2019 was 10.2% as per World Bank - https://www.financialexpress.com/eco...raman/2592023/

@dragracer567 could be correct here.

Reason: India's significant export cost is Oil. Since 2016, The oil prices dropped drastically. the surplus could have been spent to improvise domestic infrastructure or other areas.

Now, Why are you so adamant to project India's poverty by comparing with other countries? Is there anything to gain/learn from here, which could help us to better position ourselves monetarily?

Agree. Different measures for sure. My work is in healthcare social impact sector. To my eyes of what I see almost every day 22.5% sounds right.

No, he isn't - check here - https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shift...ml#post5401593
This subthread started with a comparison of our GDP to other countries. Which was what I was replying to.

I still think, he is correct. and as per the attached article, i don't see any discrepancies.

Regarding the whole GDP topic, How can we monetize it? Did we learn anything?

What? The article says it was 10% in 2019

The information is of least importance, hence could be ignored.

Poverty, for many is often by choice. Are you one of those? Or would you like to use it?

How to use GDP?

india's tax to GDP % is ~16%. US's is ~22+. EU's is ~30+ %
Earlier, India GDP was 2.4 Trillion$, which means, 16% of 2.4 Trillion would be Government income from taxes.


If GDP is rising and Per Capita is rising
Place yourself in FMCG Stocks. New launches will prosper.
Less Welfare => More Infra development.
More Merc's and BMW's.

If GDP is rising and Per Capita is rising & inflation is high
Hide in BFSI domain for better returns.

If GDP is rising and Per Capita is not inline with GDP
Sell more BMW's, Audi's or Merc's.
Invest in luxury product companies.

If GDP is rising and Per Capita is not inline with GDP & Inflation is high
Stay on Cash or commodities
Avoid Housing.

If GDP is not rising and Per Capita is constant & Currency is Depreciating
Hide in IT stocks.
Avoid Real estate.

If GDP is falling and Per Capita is falling & Currency is Depreciating
Run or Stay in Commodities.

A dozen other deductions could be pulled, but this is roughly how it helps.

Forget about common man. We all are common men. Individual's progress is a family's progress and in-turn is country's progress.


Why so much Hoopla around GDP?
GDP decides how much a nation can borrow and how good/bad a country is. This helps attracting new companies/businesses, which inturn leads to more jobs and opportunities, effectively reducing poverty.

To attract more businesses, it needs to be published, so the whole world can listen. Hence such hoopla around it.

You are right, it isn't visible. This is because the values we are talking about here denotes extreme poverty, not poverty in general. What seems to have happened is, because of welfare schemes by the various state and central governments since 2001, there has been a drop in extreme poverty but that just means people aren't going to sleep hungry anymore. What is still visible to us in multi-dimensional poverty - people still live in dilapidated slums, they don't have access to clean drinking water, food isn't nutritious, education isn't guaranteed etc. This is unlike China where the shift to manufacturing has visibly increased the standard of living. Our welfare schemes took these people out of extreme poverty but their journey out of multi-dimensional poverty will be dependent on economic growth induced employment opportunities. If not, all it will take is an event like COVID or an economic crash to push these people back into extreme poverty.

No. This figure from World Poverty Clock doesn't gel with the World Bank figures. World Bank figures say extreme poverty was at 10% in 2019.

These people probably use a different metric so can't compare with World Bank figures from 2011. So to check the drop, you need to find World Poverty Clock's 2011 figures which don't seem to be available.

First you said the information in the article agrees with him. When I pointed out to you that it doesn't, you said it should be ignored.

And I really don't understand the rest of your comment. I think it could be ignored.

https://twitter.com/BrentToderian/st...hSNtd9ZIw&s=19

Came across this tweet today morning, the given info has some very fascinating angles to it.

"A typical European car is parked 92% of the time. It spends 1/5th of its driving time looking for parking. Its 5 seats only move 1.5 people. 86% of its fuel never reaches the wheels, & most of the energy that does, moves the car, not people."

My quasi socialist mind is wondering how the world for last one century has turned this utterly uneconomic idea into a capitalist dream. Mulling over this conveys a lot to me about the real world. Maybe its not economic theory but psychology that makes the world go round.

I remember reading a long while back, "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation". This will probably never happen but maybe is what the future at one time looked like.

The dollar is close to 81INR. It is appreciating, globally, it seems.

The country which is going through unprecedented levels of inflation, sees its currency appreciate. Someone please explain how and why this is the case, in layman terms. On the other hand, Venezuela again going through runaway inflation has its currency not worth any more than toilet paper. This country has a lot of oil, too.

Simple $ is the reserve currency and the whole world keeps it afloat. US is largest market in the world. There aren't many currencies and countries quiet like the US, Europe tried and it failed British pound is another toilet paper with no fundamentals and resting on past laurels and with an economy smaller than India (but the British pound is up there when it comes to value and exchange rate) but gives free schooling and health care which is a bummer and a drain on the exchequer. Our rupee is another toilet paper which is continuously devalued to make exports competitive to support the 5% of the population that exports rest of the population be damned. There many toilet papers out there not worth their value some are lucky to belong to the first world so hold their value better than the some that not that lucky to belong to the Latin America, Asia and Africa. Ultimately it's just like arriving in a car: perception of others: If you arrive in a BMW/Merc you've ARRIVED if you arrive in a M800 even the valet will not respect you. Every currency derives value visavis the USD, even if the whole world goes bankrupt the last would be the US and it's citizens to feel the pinch.

That's because US treasury bonds are now yielding 4% pa



This is risk free returns. As an added bonus, USD appreciates against most or all developing country currencies (eg: approx 4% per annum against INR over long term). So whenever US interest rates are raised, money rushes into the country from all over the world and strengthens the currency.