The Indian economic 'miracle'

Let me point out an article, long but very interesting, Siddhartha Deb on the 'miracle' of Indian economic published on Guernica magazine. This is only a brief excerpt, to read the entire article click  here



Workers in Cochin



"The changes that have been wrought in India in the past two decades have not been kind to the poor. Even as the number of millionaires and billionaires has increased, followed by the aspirers from the middle classes, the poor have seen either little or no improvement at all, depending on which economists and policy makers one chooses to believe. The data collected by the Indian government, which has been subject to some controversy for its tendency to downplay the number of poor people and the extent of their destitution, is nevertheless stark. In 2004-2005, the last year for which data was available, the total number of people in India consuming less than twenty rupees (or fifty cents) a day was 836 million—or 77 percent of the population. The people in this group belong overwhelmingly to what policy makers refer to as the “unorganized” or “informal” sector of the economy, which means that the work they do is irregular, carried out in harsh conditions and offers no security or upward mobility."