Standard of living in India
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The standard of living in India is constantly improving. Yet the gap between the poor and rich is ever more visible. The single most common indicator used to quantify standard of living is the per capita purchasing power parity (PPP) adjusted gross domestic product (GDP). In 2005, the per capita PPP adjusted GDP for India was US$ 3300. These figures can be compared to $33,000 for the USA[citation needed], $4,900 for China[citation needed] and approximately $26,000 for most western European nations.
With one of the fastest growing economies in the world, clocked at an average growth rate of 8% between 2004-2005, India is fast on way to become a large and globally important consumer economy. The Indian middle class, touted to be anywhere between 200 and 300 million, is fast becoming used to the Western lifestyle. Though large disparities exist, the standard of living of the average Indian is slowly but definitely rising and, if current trends continue, will grow to be approximately one third that of the developed world (in PPP dollars) by the middle of the 21st century. In 2006, 22 percent of Indians lived under the poverty line, down from 50 percent in 1995. With consistently high economic growth over the next decade, however, India is aiming to eradicate poverty by 2020.<ref name="Poverty levels in India, and eradication target"> "Poverty can be eradicated by 2020: Kalam". The Indian Express. Retrieved on 2006-07-04.</ref>
In the field of technology, India has entered the industry earning a good reputation, as well as a positive stereotype.
The standard of living in India can range in magnitudes such as limited medical facilities in rural areas to world class medical facilities in the cities. The very latest machinery is used in construction projects, but many of those in the extremely large labour pool still work without mechanisation.
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[edit] Poverty
Main article:Poverty in India
The recent economic developments have helped upper and middle class Indians. Still there is a sizable population India where the benefits of development are yet to reach. The National sample survey organisation (NSSO) estimated that 22.15% of the population was living below the poverty line in 2004–2005, down from 51.3% in 1977–1978. 75% of the poor are in rural areas (27.1% of the total rural population) with most of them comprising daily wagers, self-employed households and landless labourers. 34.7% of India's poorest population still live on less than US$1 a day and 79.9% live on US$2 per day.
Since the early 1950s, successive governments have implemented various schemes, under planning, to alleviate poverty, that have met with partial success. Programmes like Food for work and National Rural Employment Programme have attempted to use the unemployed to generate productive assets and build rural infrastructure.<ref name="survey"/> In August 2005, the Indian parliament passed the Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, the largest programme of this type, in terms of cost and coverage, which promises 100 days of minimum wage employment to every rural household in 200 of India's 600 districts. The question of whether economic reforms have reduced poverty or not has fuelled debates without generating any clear cut answers and has also put political pressure on further economic reforms, especially those involving downsizing of labour and cutting down agricultural subsidies.<ref name="Datt-9"/><ref name="jgsy">Jawahar gram samriddhi yojana. Retrieved on July 9, 2005.</ref>
[edit] Physical infrastructure
Since independence, India has allocated nearly half of the total outlay of the five-year plans for infrastructural development. Much of the total outlay was spent on large projects in the area of irrigation, energy, transport, communications and social overheads. Development of infrastructure was completely in the hands of the public sector and was plagued by corruption, bureaucratic inefficiencies, urban-bias and an inability to scale investment.<ref name="infra">Sankaran, S (1994). Indian Economy: Problems, Policies and Development. Margham Publications. ISBN.</ref>
India's low spending on power, construction, transportation, telecommunications and real estate, at $31 billion or 6% of GDP, compared to China's spending of $260 billion or 20% of its GDP in 2002 has prevented India from sustaining a growth rate of around 8%. This has prompted the government to partially open up infrastructure to the private sector allowing foreign investment.<ref name="cnn-infra">Infrastructure the missing link. Retrieved on August 14, 2005.</ref><ref name="asiatradehub-infra">Infrastructure in India: Requirements and favorable climate for foreign investment. Retrieved on August 14, 2005.</ref><ref name="survey"/> India holds second position in the world in roadways' construction, more than twice that of China.<ref name="Road">Infrastructure Rankings.</ref>
As of 31 December 2005, there were an estimated 835,000 broadband lines in India.<ref name="Broadband">World broadband statistics q4-2005. Retrieved on 2006-07-24.</ref> Low tele-density is the major hurdle for slow pickup in broadband services. Over 76% of the broadband lines were via DSL and the rest via cable modems.
[edit] Regional imbalance
One of the critical problems facing India's economy is the sharp and growing regional variations among India's different states and territories in terms of per capita income, poverty, availability of infrastructure and socio-economic development. For instance, the difference in growth rate between the forward and backward states was 0.3% (5.2% & 4.9%) during 1980–81 to 1990–91, but had grown to 3.3% (6.3% & 3.0%) during 1990–91 to 1997–98.<ref name="Datt-13>Datt, Ruddar & Sundharam, K.P.M.. “27”, Indian Economy, 471–472.</ref>
The five-year plans have attempted to reduce regional disparities by encouraging industrial development in the interior regions, but industries still tend to concentrate around urban areas and port cities. Even the industrial townships in the interiors, Bhilai for instance, resulted in very little development in the surrounding areas.<ref name="bharadwaj-1">Bharadwaj, Krishna (1991). “Regional differentiation in India”, Sathyamurthy, T.V. (ed.): Industry & agriculture in India since independence. Oxford University Press, pp. 189–199. ISBN 0-19-564394-1.</ref> After liberalisation, the disparities have grown despite the efforts of the union government in reducing them. Part of the reason being that manufacturing and services and not agriculture are the engines of growth. The more advanced states are better placed to benefit from them, with infrastructure like well developed ports, urbanisation and an educated and skilled workforce which attract manufacturing and service sectors. The union and state governments of backward regions are trying to reduce the disparities by offering tax holidays, cheap land, etc., and focusing more on sectors like tourism, which although being geographically and historically determined, can become a source of growth and is faster to develop than other sectors.<ref name="understanding-2">Sachs, D. Jeffrey; Bajpai, Nirupam and Ramiah, Ananthi (2002). "Understanding Regional Economic Growth in India". Working paper 88. </ref><ref name="planning-2">Kurian, N.J.. Regional disparities in india. Retrieved on August 6, 2005.</ref>
- See also: States of India by size of economy
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
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