One-third of world’s poor live in India

India accounts for one third of the world’s poor,people living on less than about Rs 65 per day, a World Bank report on poverty has said. The report said that 1.2 billion people are still living in extreme poverty across the world.
The report, The State of the Poor: Where are the Poor and Where are the Poorest?,shows that the number of extremely poor people in the developing world has come down from 50 percent to 21 per cent between 1981 and 2010.
According to World Bank president Jim Yong Kim,the overall decline was ‘remarkable progress’, but the remaining 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty was ‘a stain on our collective conscience’.
However, the scene in India is different as it was home to one-fifth of the world’s poorest people 30 years ago.
Experts say despite impressive economic growth in recent years, India’s poor show on the poverty front has much to do with population explosion. While India’s population is expected to reach 150 crore by 2026, the economy is not growing fast enough to create jobs that are required to check poverty going up.
World Bank chief economist Kaushik Basu, who until last year was economic advisor to the prime minister, said the figures called for the wealthier countries to do more.
The perception of India as a fast-growing economy has also led to developed countries significantly reducing their aid, thus adversely affecting several programmes on healthcare and education across the country.
The Sub-Saharan Africa contributes another third and China comes next, contributing 13 per cent (down from 43 per cent in 1981).