Alice+Diary+Entry+2

=DIARY ENTRY 2=

Today I am traveling from New Delhi to Calcutta (or Kolkata as it is known in India). The saddest thing that I came across whilst traveling to Calcutta was the amount of people who were completely poverty-stricken. For such a beautiful country with such beautiful people that is thriving with culture, it is devastating to see the amount of people that are struggling to survive. Although recent positive economic developments have helped the Indian "Middle Class" a great amount, there is still a substantial amount of Indians suffering from poverty. It is estimated that presently 22.15% of the population is living below the poverty line. Although this is a huge improvement from 51.3% in 1978, and 26% in 2000, there is still so much obviously needed to be done to eradicate poverty in India. =[ I came across some statistics in my travels that were very confronting for me. Living in Australia my whole life, we have never really seen poverty for what it is. Occasionally we might flick on the television and see an add that shows us how lucky we are and that we need to help, but few of us actually do. We don't look out the window every morning and get slapped in the face with the brutality of what's really going on in our world, and few of us actually get to see it first hand. Traveling here has changed my outlook completely on poverty after I discovered that the major causes for poverty in India over the last 50 years have been:
 * high level of dependence on primitive methods of agriculture;
 * rural urban divide;
 * 75% of Indian population depends on agriculture whereas the contribution of agriculture to the GDP was 22%;
 * While services and industry have grown at double digit figures, agriculture growth rate has dropped from 4.8% to 2%;
 * High level of inequality arising from rural-urban divide;
 * Unemployment;
 * High population growth rate;
 * High illiteracy rate (about 35% of adult population);
 * Protectionist policies pursued till 1991 that prevented high foreign investment.

These statics were very distressing for me to see, as in Australia none of these are issues for most Australians, but despite all of these confronting statistics, India currently adds 40 million people to its middle class every year. I've learnt that there is an estimated 300 million Indians that now belong to the middle class; with one-third of them having emerged from poverty in the last ten years.

At the current rate of growth, a majority of Indians will be middle-class by the year 2025. Literacy rates have also risen from 52 percent to 65 percent in the same period. As sad as it is that there are people here living in poverty, it is extremely uplifting and hopeful to see the changes and the amount of people emerging out of poverty and into the middle class. =]

This is a diagram I found outlining the percentages of Indians living in poverty. The states with lighter shades have more people living below the poverty line.