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.