 According to the World Bank, India is a lower-middle income country, but it still has the highest number of people living below the extreme poverty line in the world. Over a thousand existing anti-poverty programmes have not resolved the problem.
But, following successful pilot experiments and pressure from civil society, the government is now beginning to consider giving an annual basic income of 10-15,000 rupees (£118 to £177) to every person in India. A while ago I read an article that proved to me, once and for all, that economic growth will not solve poverty. Based on data from the last two decades showing how the benefits of growth are distributed, analysts had assessed how much would be needed to lift everyone above a $5 a day poverty line. To achieve this, they found that the world economy would need to grow to 173 times its current size, and the average gross income per person would need to be over $1.3 million.
An average income of over a million dollars each, just so that the unluckiest people can earn $5 a day? |
