The second statement you made about no trend in rural poverty in the 1990s in India is what I am aware of. My data came from T.N. Srinavasin. Again, his data suggests declining poverty rates in urban areas, but no change in rural areas. There certainly are difficult problems of measurment involved here. Barkley Rosser ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Mage" <jmage at panix.com> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2001 6:56 PM Subject: Re: Gunter Grass on globalisation
> > >Has he bothered to learn anything about the effects of
> > >"neoliberalism" on India?
> > >
> > >
> > >Brad DeLong
> > >
> > >Every Indian I've ever met says squalor and degradation.
> >
> >
> > The United Nations Human Development Index has India at 0.431 in
> > 1980, 0.470 in 1985, 0.509 in 1990, and 0.563 in 1998. India's
> > decade-and-a-half of semi-neoliberalism seem to have seen a lot of
> > economic growth along with some increases in education and some
> > reductions in infant mortality.
>
> Percentage of People below Poverty Line in India, 1993-4 and 1998
>
> Rural Poverty (%) Urban Poverty (%) Combined Ratio(%) Absolute#
>
> 1993-94 37.27 32.36 35.95 328.5 million
> 1998 42.58 32.87 39.89 376.8 million
>
> Source: S.P.Gupta, "Trickle Down Theory Revisited: The Role of
> Employment and Poverty". _Indian Journal of Labor Economics_, vol.43,
> no.1, 2000
>
> The latest (1999-2000) round of National Sample Survey is not comparable
> as a result of changed methodology. These number games are all laid out
> in detail in Abhijit Sen, "Consumption, Distribution & Poverty"
> http://www.macroscan.com/analysis/epwpov.PDF
> He asserts that there is a "general consensus that rural poverty at an
> all-India level did _not_ show any declining trend over the 1990s."
>
> john mage
>