The Two Worlds of India: Poverty and the Economic Rise of 'New India'

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Over the past two decades, India has undertaken a series of economic reforms that have spurred to a period of unprecedented economic growth; growth rates averaging 3-6 percent in the years 1975-90 have doubled during the first decade of the new millennium. Driven by the ICT and service sectors, India has become the 4th largest economy in the world (based on ppp) and is frequently referred to as an emerging global power. Yet despite the economic growth of the past 20 years the number of people living in urban slum has increased by more than 20 percent over the past decade and according to the Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index 645 million Indians lived below the poverty line in 2010. Recent estimates by the Indian government based on the daily cost of calories in urban and rural areas suggest that nearly 40% of the Indian population, or 380 million people, live in hunger.