UN says poverty in India higher than Pakistan

New Delhi: India has the world’s largest number of citizens living under the poverty line, with 612 million, according to a UN report.

Despite of the impression that India economy is fastest growing in the world, it has been ranked as poorer than its neighboring Pakistan, Daily Telegraph said quoted report of United Nations on global poverty.

The report also finds more ‘gender equality’ in conservative Pakistan than in ‘tolerant’ India.

Its findings amount to a wake-up call for a nation which has taken great pride in its rapid economic growth and the increasing clout of its billionaire business leaders but has failed to share the spoils with its poor. Britain’s Department for International Development has pointed to this chequered progress to justify its continuing aid to India.

The Human Development Report reveals that while India ranks slightly above Pakistan in its level of ‘human development’ – based on life expectancy, schooling and per capita income – its wider poverty level is worse than Pakistan.

In absolute terms, 41.6 per cent of India’s 1.1 billion people earned less than 78 pence per day compared with 22.6 per cent of Pakistan’s 173 million.

The report quotes its ‘multi-dimensional poverty index’ which includes measures of schooling, child mortality, nutrition, access to electricity, toilets, drinking water, and hygienic living conditions, and reveals India is poorer.

More surprisingly, India is ranked below Pakistan and Bangladesh on gender equality which reflects maternal death rates, teenage pregnancies, access to education, and the number of women parliamentarians and in the workplace.