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Comment by atentaten | Hacker News Reader

> India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

At what costs?

I've heard this narrative before as it has happened in many Western countries and it is continuing to happen in China. I don't have the answer, but I always wonder about the costs of lifting so many people out of poverty, for example, there could be costs related to: environment, quality of life, traditions and values, mental health, etc.

Along with that thought experiment, I wonder how did they get into poverty in the first place. A lot of areas that are now declared as poverty zones today may have been poor in the past, but were self-sufficient and self sustaining.

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> I wonder how did they get into poverty in the first place.

Human history is basically nothing but suffering and starvation. 80% of the population was living in extreme poverty before the industrial revolution. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-populatio...

>> there could be costs related to: environment, quality of life, traditions and values, mental health, etc.

quality of life, mental health: are you implying folks in poverty were perhaps happier before? If so, you're probably not familiar with life in poverty.

environment: while there are larger issues that could likely surface (more consumption of electricity, additional waste etc.), the environment in which they lived most likely improved (sanitation, medical help, gas instead of wood-burning stove, cow-dung as fuel, water-borne diseases); this comes from personal experience having lived close to one of the largest slums a long, long time ago.

> I wonder how did they get into poverty in the first place

Humanity has always, by current standards, been dirt poor and living near starvation levels.

The last 250 years of industrialism has changed that enormously.

To answer your question, they got into poverty because they had always lived in poverty, since the dawn of time.

> I wonder how did they get into poverty in the first place. A lot of areas that are now declared as poverty zones today may have been poor in the past, but were self-sufficient and self sustaining.

Well, when the British left in 1945, roughly 15% of the country was literate [0], now that is up to 77% [0]. From here [1], it seems that poverty was around 45% of the population (361 million). It also says the rate varied based on how the monsoon season went, which makes sense for a primarily agrarian society, especially one which had to import food to meet their needs till 1965 (roughly).

so, basically, the British didn't leave India in a good place. See [2]

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India#/media/File:...

[1] - https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNACR801.pdf

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

>A lot of areas that are now declared as poverty zones today may have been poor in the past, but were self-sufficient and self sustaining.

everthing was on a razorthin margin, just a minor floods or droughts could kill double percentage of the population and they werent that uncommon, hence the monstrous birthrate. An analogy in animal realm is population of animals dependent on variable inputs of "food sources", their population graphs are always a rollercoaster

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