India Development Coalition of America-IDCA-Poverty Alleviation

In economic writings on India it is commonplace to describe Indian economic inequality to be relatively low. In support, the inequality measure of Gini coefficient (with values of zero for no inequality, and one for extreme inequality) on the basis of NSS consumption data is usually cited. This Gini coefficient in 2004-5 was 0.325, and is indeed lower than in many developing countries, including China, and by constant repetition, both in national and international documents and the financial press, this has become part of the folklore about Indian inequality. But there are reasons to believe that the NSS data under-represent the rich, and in any case while for other developing countries the Gini coefficient often refers to income distribution, India's refers to distribution of consumption expenditure (as NSS does not collect income data), which is usually less than that of income (partly because the rich tend to save more than the poor). The NCAER occasionally collects income data,

Drawing a Line Under Poverty in India By PAUL BECKETT It's tempting to ask the World Bank for a few hundred copies of their new study, "Moving Out of Poverty: The Promise of Empowerment and Democracy in India," and mail them to the Prime Minister and every Cabinet minister, minister of state and state chief minister in the nation. Unveiled last week, the study tracks the fate of 30,000 rural Indians in 300 villages in four states from 1995-2005. Before you holler "this was just as the last government was starting, we have a new government now," one of the things that is most telling about the report is how up-to-date it remains on the issues of rural poverty in India – and how it provides the ballast for simple, targeted priorities that the new government would do well to heed as it prepares to throw megabucks at the poor in the name of inclusion. Paul Beckett The study, conducted in Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam, found that poverty was, n