The 2014 global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by researchers at the University of Oxford covers 108 countries — 31 low-income countries, 67 middle-income countries and 10 high-income countries. These countries have a total population of 5.4 billion people, some 78 per cent of the world’s population.

The MPI assesses poverty at the individual level. If someone is deprived in a third or more of 10weighted indicators, the global index identifies them as “MPI poor,” and the extent — or intensity — of their poverty is measured by the number of deprivations they are experiencing. 

Those indicators are based on health, education and living standards and among other things include years of schooling, levels of nutrition, child mortality, flooring material (for instance, dirt) and access to water and electricity.

Based on a rural-urban analysis of the 1.6 billion people identified as MPI poor, 85 per cent live in rural areas. 

Poverty reduction is not necessarily uniform across all poor people in a country or across population subgroups. An overall improvement may leave the poorest of the poor behind. 

The highest levels of inequality are to be found in 15 sub-Saharan African countries and in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. 

The researchers have paid special attention to the situation of the destitute — the poorest of the poor. Over half of the world’s poor are classed as destitute. 

According to the MPI, out of its 1.2 billion-plus population, India is home to over 340 million destitute people and is the second poorest country in south Asia after war-torn Afghanistan. 

Some 640 million poor people live in India, 40 per cent of the world’s poor. 

India had the second-best social indicators among the six south Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan) 20 years ago. Now it has the second worst position, ahead only of Pakistan. 

Bangladesh has less than half of India’s per-capita GDP but has infant and child mortality rates lower than those of India. 

According to two comparable surveys conducted in Bangladesh and India in 2006, in Bangladesh 82 per cent of children are fully immunised, 88 per cent get vitamin A supplements and 89 per cent are breastfed within an hour of birth. 

The corresponding figures for Indian children are below 50 per cent in all cases and as low as 25 per cent for vitamin A supplementation.

Moreover, over half of the population in India practices open defecation, a major health hazard, compared with less than 10 per cent in Bangladesh. 

Bangladesh has overtaken India in terms of a wide range of basic social indicators, including life expectancy, child survival, enhanced immunisation rates, reduced fertility rates and particular schooling indicators.  

In recent times, India has experienced much publicised high levels of GDP growth. So what is going wrong? Amartya Sen and the World Bank’s chief economist Kaushik Basu have argued that the bulk of India’s aggregate growth is occurring through a disproportionate rise in the incomes at the upper end of the income ladder. 

The ratio between the top and bottom 10 per cent of wage distribution has doubled since the early 1990s, when India opened up its economy. 

According to the 2011 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development report Divided We Stand, this has made India one of the worst performers in the category of emerging economies. 

The poverty alleviation rate is no higher than it was 25 years ago. Up to 300,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1997 due to economic distress and many more have quit farming.

Assets such as airports, seeds, ports and infrastructure built up with public money or toil have been sold off into private hands. Secretive memorandums of understanding have been signed between the government and resource extraction-related industries, which has led to 300,000 of the nation’s poorest people being driven from their lands in tribal areas and around 50,000 placed into “camps.” 

As a result, Naxalites and other insurgents are in violent conflict with the state across many of these areas.

Where have the benefits been accrued from the 8-9 per cent year-on-year GDP growth in recent times? Sit down and read the statistics. Then step outside and see the islands of wealth and privilege surrounded by the types of poverty and social deprivations catalogued by the MPI.

Global Finance Integrity has shown that the outflow of illicit funds into foreign bank accounts has accelerated since opening up the economy to neoliberalism in the early 1990s. 

“High net worth individuals” — ie the very rich — are the biggest culprits. Crony capitalism and massive scams have become the norm. It is not too hard to see what is going wrong.

India’s social development has been sacrificed on the altar of greed and corruption for bulging Swiss accounts and it has been stolen and put in the pockets of the country’s ruling class “wealth creators” and the multinational vultures who long ago stopped circling and are now swooping. 

The rivers and soils have been poisoned and people are being been made ill in places like Punjab. 

Agriculture is being hijacked by the likes of Monsanto. Land is being grabbed on behalf of any number of corporations and the great nuclear power money fest is in full swing.

Wealthy corporations driving the agenda are altering mindsets via advertising, clever PR or by sponsoring (hijacking) major events, by funding research in public institutes and thus slanting findings and the knowledge paradigm in their favour or by securing key positions in international trade negotiations in an attempt to structurally readjust retail, food production and agriculture. They do it by many methods and means.

India’s seeds, mountains, water, forests and biodiversity are being sold off. The farmers and tribals are being sold out. India is being bled dry. 

You think this is too extreme a point of view? Tell that to the 340 million destitute who make up over half of India’s poor.