INDIA: POORER THAN NEIGHBOURS!! BUT NUCLEAR POWER!?!?

India poorer than Sri Lanka

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has in its 2008 Key Indicator said India ranked below even Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh in terms of poverty among Asian countries.
The ADB said its Indicator which provided a new methodology in defining and measuring poverty showed that almost 54.8 per cent of Indians earned less than USD 1.35 a day in 2005.

According to the World Bank's latest definition of poverty, persons earning less than USD 1.25 dollars a day are considered poor. Earlier, the poverty line was fixed at USD 1 dollar a day.

The ADB study also pointed out that the only Asian country which suffered from higher incidence of poverty than India was Nepal where more than 55 per cent of the people were living below the poverty line.

Among the other neighbouring countries, 42.9 per cent were poor in Bangladesh, 24.9 per cent in Pakistan and 5.9 per cent in Sri Lanka.

ADB study added that 62.19 crore people were poor in India in 2005, while according to World Bank's estimates the number of poor was 45.6 crore, which were more than poor living in sub-Sahara Africa. "Policies that can also make growth more inclusive (should) retain the gold standard that policy makers should pursue," ADB said and added that sustained economic growth was imperative for poverty reduction.

According to the ADB report, pro-poor distribution policy can reduce poverty from 54.8 per cent to 20.4 per cent by 2020, while the pro-rich policies would only bring down the poverty to 29.6 per cent.
courtesy:dailymirror.lk