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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

> the presence of bad things doesn't mean you can ignore a huge upswing in living standards all over a country of a billion+ people.

You can say that about China, but not about India. Things have not improved much for the average Indian. In fact, in many places it's gotten worse.

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Everywhere I go in Pune, I see new stores, new shopping malls, new apartment complexes advertising Italian marble and fitness centers [1]. The traffic on the roads today is unprecedented, caused by the fact that a huge number of Indians can now afford cars (car production has increased about 500% over the past 10 years).

Don't get me wrong - it's got a long way to go. This morning I just jogged through undocumented housing without plumbing or electricity. But to say things have not improved is just ridiculous - even many of the people without electricity had cellphones. (Certain shops let you charge a cellphone for a few rupees.)

[1] The fitness centers are, unfortunately, never used. My apt complex has a gym, and the weights are always exactly where I leave them.

The United Nations Human Development Report doesn't seem to agree: http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/IND.html.

What do you mean?

Kashmir is excluded from India in that map.

Is that relevant to the analysis of the level of human development and well being? Kashmir probably lags behind because of the conflict, but the numbers for India as a whole are probably in the same direction as shown in the UN report.

What are you talking about? The UN's Millennium Development Goal (MDG) report says:

"India is expected to reduce its poverty rate from 51 per cent in 1990 to 24 per cent in 2015, reducing its number of extremely poor by 188 million."

http://news.outlookindia.com/item.aspx?685779

As per BBC, 80% Indians surviving on 20 rupees/day http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6946800.stm

The article is old and it quotes an unnamed 'survey'.

I'm reminding you again, the discussion here is about progression of India from its own past but you're either coming up with figures for some particular year or some senseless comparison with other countries. In other words, you're simply trolling.

836 million Indians live on less than Rs 20 a day

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/836-million-indians-live-on-less-...

That's a typo, it's almost certainly meant to say 200 INR/day.

India's GDP per capita works out to be about 145 INR/day, so it's plausible that the 80'th percentile would be 33% higher than that. It's a little unlikely that the 80'th percentile would be 1/7 of that.

Every presentation I have seen on India cites dramatic improvement from 2000-2010.

Can we get some objective data or examples for these claims?

Former USSR republics are doing better than India http://doingbusiness.org/rankings

   Georgia - 12,
   Estonia - 17,
   Lithuania - 23
   Latvia - 24,
   Kyrgyzstan - 44,
   Armenia - 48,
   Azerbaijan - 54,
   Kazakhstan - 59,
   Belarus - 68,
   Moldova - 90,
   Russia - 123,
   .
   INDIA - 134

CARS PER 1000 PEOPLE

   Moldova - 49,
   Azerbaijan - 51,
   Belarus - 87,
   Ukraine - 140,
   Kazakhstan - 170,
   Russia - 213,
   Latvia - 372,
   Estonia - 410,
   Lithuania - 453
    .
   INDIA - 12

GLOBAL PEACE INDEX

   Lithuania - 42,
   Estonia - 46,
   Latvia - 54,
   Moldova - 66,
   Kazakhstan - 95,
   Ukraine - 97,
   Belarus - 105,
   Uzbekistan - 110,
   Armenia - 113,
   Turkmenistan - 117,
   Azerbaijan - 119,
   .
   INDIA - 128

We're talking about whether India has made progress from its own past. Why are you bringing former Soviet states for comparison?

Why shouldn't I compare India (born in 1947) with Soviet states (born in 1991)? Do HDI or Wikipedia or I need your permission?

Well because its absurd to call them born in 1991. Tomorrow if Catalonia or Basque nation were to secede or Scotland for that matter, would you call them born in 2011 in this context and then compare them with India?

Because that is not the topic under discussion? We were talking about improvements in India, not absolute comparisons.

Can't compare India to former Soviet countries- the Soviet countries had a much better infrastructure/educational/standard of living base.

In some former Soviet countries (Moldova for example), the standard of living has declined since the 80s, India on the other hand, seems to be improving.

Global Peace Index: Uzbekistan - 110, INDIA - 128

Karimov boiled his people alive. I don't whether that means I should take the rankings with a grain of salt, or weep over India actually coming out below.

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