The alternative is the silly measures of "poverty" we use in the first world which are mathematically unachieveable by design so they can always be used to justify measures politicians want to pass: "won't you think of the child poverty you heartless monster" etc.
I found this article interesting. Personally I think starvation is a very low bar to clear. What matters to the first world is whether or not India has a middle class that is able to buy stuff.
No, I disagree. The alternative, as the original comment said, is to measure access to calories, nutrition, or other metrics like prevalence of starvation, access to shelter, access to sanitation, prevalence of certain health issues, etc.
Measuring poverty via the international poverty line has often been criticized [1][2][3].
[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337335330_A_critiqu...
[2]: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-i...
[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/8/21/exposing-the-gr...