I'd be hard pressed to believe that 40% of Indians are on par with the most destitute bits of Africa. Any source to validate this ?
You can roughly divide India into two parts, the British controlled, and the non-British controlled, based on the pre-independence situation.
The british controlled areas, mainly the northern states like UP, bihar, bengal have huge number of poor families. UP has too many people, and most of them are poor.
The non British controlled ares, like Maharashtra and some southern states, are generally a bit better off, and here is where you find most rich and middle class.
The central states are riddled with decades old insurgency, which could be solved using military, but govt doesn't want to use military on it's own people. These areas contain tribal people, and they are very poor.
Now, all this is not a perfect science, but this is how it generally is. Now when a foreigner visits India, he/she might visit places like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, maybe North eastern Himalayan areas, Goa and some beaches in Lakshadweep. The image you get is that of extremely rich people and extremely poor people, along with a lot of middle-class people living in these cities.
But outside these cities, when you go to central India(you won't, as rebels will kidnap you), you can see extreme poverty. Same with other non-tourist areas.
When will this finger pointing stop?
Not in any way mean that we should blame them even after 70 years.
We blame Britain because it's easier to have scapegoats, it's much harder to acknowledge failure and actually fix the problems.
First of all your original comment is factually wrong. Bombay and Pune were British controlled so your theory is wrong that non British controlled areas are doing better.
You dont even have to go to central India, just go 90 kms outside Mumbai.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai-news/over-254-children-...
The poverty of the Northern areas is not in lieu of them being exploited by direct British Governance (although I'm sure it contributed much towards it). Its mainly lack of coastal trade routes, population explosion and ridiculously high levels of corruption/poor governance.
The Southern states have done better mostly because their populations have not exploded as much, and being on the coast, they're able to participate in international trade a lot more (key to prosperity in the modern economy). There also seems to be more emphasis on getting more education in the cultures of the South which has led to a highly educated labor force.
(I don't have statistics on hand, this is from reading other analyses)
This doesn't prove the Economist's claim per se, but it indicates to me that it's not absurd.
A lot of the extreme poverty in India is concentrated in the northeast and in rural populations, so it's not always super visible to visitors outside the segregated slums of cities.
1. Richest 1% of Indians now own 58.4% of the country’s wealth making it the second highest inequality in distribution of wealth after Russia.
2. 96% of adults in India have net worth less than USD 10,000, whereas this percentage is only 68% in China.
3. India accounts for 3.1% of mid range wealth while China has 33%, 10 times more than India.
4. 80% of adults in India are in the global bottom half, and Africa is close behind at 79%
5. India's bottom wealth individuals increased by 4.6% where population growth of 2.5 has offset growth of household wealth. China's representation has halved over the last 10 years.
India's explosive population growth rate is offsetting the growth in GDP in the near future. State of infrastructure is abysmal even in the top metro areas. Most of the upcoming industries still face a huge number of logistical and bureaucratic hurdles to get off the ground. Corruption is high as usual. Most of the politicking involves well marketable slogans run by dedicated media cells and whitewashing of development metrics. Just one annual visit to India every year shows me zero improvements to anything I have grown up with. Trains are dirtier and more expensive, Mumbai and Delhi top the world in air pollution, productivity is ultra low owing to long hours of commute in high paying jobs leading to mass emigration of "highly skilled economically well to do" labour force to Western countries, The coveted and prestigious colleges of education are insanely competitive to get in for the few who can.Destitutes line up the streets everywhere you go. You just need a visit.
[0] http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi