It feels a little fashionable to bash India with not-quite-true statistics at the moment. Most statisticians can't take into complete account the scale at which India really functions, consequently most data that masquerades as true, is generally tainted or pure conjecture.

India poverty myth

One recent report I saw concluded that 77% of India is below the poverty line and has a per capita income of about 50 cents per day. Most of the leading publications carried the findings. I wondered with almost 500 million in the middle classes, where is the population left to constitute 77% in poverty. 77% is approximately 770 million people, the country's total population is 1.1 billion people, the sums do not add up.

The best part is it is accepted and reported by the best media outlets and publications. It appears a bunch of economists gather someplace after commissioning research exercises which at most reach out to a sample of 100,000 people in a country of a billion plus. Or old government data is extrapolated and collated, then trade-offs are made to create consensus data that's globally accepted.

Economic inaccuracy

It's good, they do what they do, else we wouldn't have a point to work from, but most India data is only that; a starting point. On speaking personally too many economists and social scientists, and speaking from experience - I personally was an economics student; so I understand how these algorithms work - they are at best 'colored' data. At most India's population at the bottom of the social and economic pyramid is 26%, which is about 260 million people. The balance 74% or 740 million people have the means or the ability to feed and shelter themselves.

India open to refugees

Also remember, a segment of this 26% are people who have lost everything in neighboring countries and come to India as the last resort. India has the largest refugee community in the world and is home to climate refugees or persecuted people. Bangladeshi's, Tibetans, Afghans, Iranians, Pakistanis, Burmese, Nepalese all find their way to India and we provide them the opportunity to become what they can with whatever potential they have.

Contradictory findings

I depend and rely most of the time on the Economist magazine or the World Bank sources for data as they seem to be the sources with most accuracy and least 'color', but trust me I have seen every single report contradict every other. The AIDS epidemic estimations until the mid 2000's were so grossly off the mark that India seemed to be on the brink of a pandemic scare. Now in the mid 2000's they have realised that they were grossly off the mark.

Consider this hypothesis, 260 million people are poor. Imagine that out of this 10% (no more) have no access to food, what would happen if 26 million people died due to hunger? India is a democracy, no iron curtain exists, do you think an occurrence of such scale, would go unreported?

We have our ills but to base all things on just data churned out by people who think they know, is being judgmental at best.

Ameet can be contact directly at mailameets@yahoo.com