News from off the soapbox: poverty in India

I saw Slumdog Millionaire yesterday. I thought it was great, plot devices were clever. Go see it - Roger Ebert's review is a better summary than I can give here.

It also, however, was yet another stunning depiction of the abject poverty that still happens, in this day and age, in the world. I was reminded of the following:

“To sum up, an overwhelming majority of the Indian population, around three-quarters, is poor and vulnerable and it is a staggering 836 million as of 2004-05. This includes 70 million or 6.4% who may be characterised as extremely poor with a per capita consumption of less than or three-quarters of the official poverty line. To this should be added 167 million of those who are poor with consumption not more than that fixed as the official poverty line. If this is relaxed to include those with a per capita consumption of up to 25% above the poverty line, called marginally poor here, then we find another 207 million. These three groups account for 444 million or 40.8% of the population. To this we add those with a per capita consumption between 1.25 and two times the poverty line as vulnerable and this group of poor and vulnerable comes to 836 million of Indians or well over 75% of the population.

“The next major finding is the close association between poverty and vulnerability with one’s social identity. The two social groups who are at the bottom by this classification are the SCs/STs, who constitute the bottom layer, and the Muslims, who are in the next layer. This does not mean that the other groups are far better off. The next group is the OBCs but better than the two bottom layers. Even for those who do not belong to any of these groups, the incidence is 55%.”

from ‘India’s Common People: Who Are They, How Many Are They and How Do They Live?’ by Arjun Sengupta, K P Kannan and G Raveendran in the Economic & Political Weekly, March 15, 2008

We have a LONG way to go in fixing this world. And I suppose fixing means different things to different folks: I mean making sure people are basically healthy and safe with enough to eat, and are not regularly tortured and persecuted. We as Americans are all yearning for a better 2009, it's hard to be reminded that there's so many places in this world where people quite simply do not have the ability, the means, or the luxury of even hoping for a better future. They are living moment to moment, with not many moments left.

A good place to read about India's social justice issues is at infochange.