Of the 300 million Indian households surveyed, an
overwhelming majority (73%) live in villages. Of this rural population, less
than 5% earn enough to pay taxes, only 2.5% own a 4-wheeler vehicle and less
than 10% have salaried jobs. Not only does rural India have miserable
statistics on income and asset ownership, its literacy rates are low. Only 3.5%
of students graduate and around 35.7% of residents can't read or write.
India's definition of "poor" has been debated by
development economists and activists, with several finding the official poverty
line too low and leaving out a number of people who might still need government
assistance. In 2014, a report by the Indian government Planning Commission
estimated that 363 million Indians, making up 29.5% of the total population,
were living below the poverty line in 2011-12. The report, by the Rangarajan
Expert Group, also estimates that the India poverty ratio fell from 38.2% to
29.5% between 2009-10 and 2011-12, lifting 91.6 million individuals out of
poverty.
According to a Pew Research Center report released this
month, while people were able to move up the social ladder from poor to low
income during the last decade, the actual number of people in the middle class
(living on $10-20 a day) barely budged from 1% in 2001 to 3% in 2011. Most
developing countries set poverty lines far below those of advanced country
levels.
Living on double the Indian Planning Commission poverty line
of $2.40 per day would still mean not meeting nutritional and other needs at
developed economy levels. Many poor people "lifted out of poverty"
are still living at levels closer to $2.40 than $10 per day. The Pew report
estimates that at the proposed Rangarajan poverty line, food consumption alone
would take up 57% of a rural family's budget and 47% of an urban family's
budget.
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