Will poverty increase with GDP?

Poverty in India has increased considerably in the recent past, mainly due to the neo-liberal economic policies implemented by the national and the state governments.

Utsa Patnaik, Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University who specialises particularly in the agrarian economy has said,

“Even if I take the lower nutritional norm of 2,200 calories, not the official norm, 70 per cent of the people are below the poverty line; if I take the actual nutritional norm of 2,400 calories, then 87 per cent are below the poverty line. There is a huge increase in poverty as compared with 1993-94.”

Read the full article No mechanism to protect the poor here

Harsh Mander noted social worker and writer and a former member of the Indian Administrative Service (who has resigned in 2002 after the Gujarat riots), said, in an article in the magazine “Himal Southasian – October 2008″

The capacities of governments seem acutely limited in their ability to see, and then list and measure, such issues as hunger, deprivation and want, and then to identify those who chronically live at the edge of starvation. There is, in fact, no dearth of professional knowledge and resources available to public authorities. What is lacking is integrity and compassion.

Read the full article Poverty the eye cannot see here.