Poverty in India irrespective of its economic miracle

ZARUA, INDIA: When flames from an open cooking fire raced through Fida Hussein’s shack in northern India, it was a disaster for him and his poverty-stricken family.

“We have nothing,” said Hussein as he stood in the ruins of his hut through which the sky could be seen between the burnt roof timbers, in a remote corner of Uttar Pradesh. Hussein informed that his family lacks furniture and clothes. Like 400 million other Indians, he has no access to electricity. The village, which is 40 miles away from the state capital Lucknow, lacks running water.

Indian millionaires grew by 51 percent to 126,700 individuals in 2009, according to the US investment bank Merrill Lynch, and consultants Capgemini. But it seems that the increasing wealth has not trickled down appropriately to the Indian lower classes.

“There are two categories growing in the ‘Rising India’... the super rich, and the abysmally poor,” noted newspaper editor M J Akbar.

The re-elected left-of-center Congress government increased social spending by raising health and education budgets.

India’s Planning Commission stated that an estimated 440 million Indians were malnourished

As part of its anti-poverty drive, the government is drafting a Right to Food Act which calls for a government-subsidy for wheat and rice for households below the poverty line.

The government will spend at least 250 billion dollars on poor in the next five years. However, a recent report by the investment house, CLSA Asia Pacific Markets, estimated that more than 100 billion dollars would be skimmed off due to corruption.

India’s “economic miracle”  of 1991 faces grave challenges by the prevalent poverty.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2010.