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Modi government called ‘out of touch' for claiming India is one of world's most equal nations

Modi government called ‘out of touch' for claiming India is one of world's most equal nations

Independent9 hours ago
India 's opposition party has accused the Narendra Modi government of "intellectual dishonesty" after it claimed the country was among the world's most equal.
The federal Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on 5 July claimed India ranked "fourth globally in income equality", citing a World Bank report. "This is a remarkable achievement for a country of its size and diversity," the release said.
The World Bank, in its 'Poverty & Equity Brief' report in April, found that over the past decade India had indeed significantly reduced its poverty rate. "Extreme poverty [living on less than $2.15 (£1.5 )per day] fell from 16.2 per cent in 2011-12 to 2.3 per cent in 2022-23, lifting 171 million people above this line," the report stated.
The World Bank said India's consumption-based Gini index improved from 28.8 in 2011-12 to 25.5 in 2022-23, while warning that inequality may be underestimated due to data limitations.
The Gini Index, which ranges from value 0 through 100, is used to understand how equally income, wealth, or consumption is distributed across households or individuals. The lower the Gini Index, the more equal the country is perceived to be.
The World Bank report added that in contrast, the World Inequality Database shows income inequality rising from a Gini of 52 in 2004 to 62 in 2023. "Wage disparity [in India] remains high, with the median earnings of the top 10 per cent being 13 times higher than the bottom 10 per cent in 2023-24," it added.
The Modi government in its press note claimed that India's Gini index made it the fourth most equal country in the world, after the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Belarus. The World Bank has made no such claims about India's ranking.
"Three months after its release, the Modi Government's drumbeaters and cheerleaders have begun spinning the World Bank's data to make the staggeringly out-of-touch claim that India is among the world's most equal societies," the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, said on X.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh dismissed the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government's assertion, arguing that no country with a poverty rate of 28.1 per cent could make "a justifiable claim to being one of the most equal societies in the world".
He noted that the government's use of an updated purchasing power parity (PPP) conversion factor from 2021, rather than 2017, would inflate poverty reduction figures. 'More updated data... would result in a higher rate of extreme poverty,' the statement read.
Indian news website The Wire noted if the World Bank's income inequality figures are accounted for rather than consumption, India has a Gini index of 61 in 2019 and 2023. That would rank India 176th out of 216 countries and territories, compared to an equivalent rank of 115th in 2009.
The Congress party questioned the Modi government's poverty benchmarks, saying that according to the World Bank's lower-middle-income poverty line of $3.65/day (£2.6), India's poverty rate stood at 28.2 per cent in 2022.
Mr Ramesh said the figure contrasts sharply with the government's assertion, based on a $3/day (£2.2) benchmark, that only 5.3 per cent of the population was living in poverty in 2022-23.
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Emergency: The Indian cartoonist who fought the censors with a smile
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Emergency: The Indian cartoonist who fought the censors with a smile

"It's unfair to lift censorship suddenly," growls a grizzled newspaper editor into the phone, a copy of The Daily Pulp sprawled across his desk. "We should be given time to prepare our minds."The cartoon capturing this moment - piercing and satirical - is the work of Abu Abraham, one of India's finest political cartoonists. His pen skewered power with elegance and edge, especially during the 1975 Emergency, a 21-month stretch of suspended civil liberties and muzzled media under Indira Gandhi's press was silenced overnight on 25 June. Delhi's newspaper presses lost power, and by morning censorship was law. The government demanded the press bend to its will - and, as opposition leader LK Advani later famously remarked, many "chose to crawl". Another famous cartoon - he signed them Abu, after his pen name - from that time shows a man asking another: "What do you think of editors who are more loyal than the censor?"In many ways, half a century later, Abu's cartoons still ring true. India currently ranks 151st in the World Press Freedom Index, compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders. This reflects growing concerns about media independence under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. Critics allege increasing pressure and attacks on journalists, acquiescent media and a shrinking space for dissenting voices. The government dismisses these claims, insisting that the media remain free and vibrant. After nearly 15 years drawing cartoons in London for The Observer and The Guardian, Abu had returned to India in the late 1960s. He joined the Indian Express newspaper as a political cartoonist at a time when the country was grappling with intense political later wrote that pre-censorship - which required newspapers and magazines to submit their news reports, editorials and even ads to government censors before publication - began two days after the Emergency was declared, was lifted after a few weeks, then reimposed a year later for a shorter period."For the rest of the time I had no official interference. I have not bothered to investigate why I was allowed to carry on freely. And I am not interested in finding out."Indira Gandhi's Emergency: When India's democracy was put on pauseMany of Abu's Emergency-era cartoons are iconic. One shows then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signing the proclamation from his bathtub, capturing the haste and casualness with which it was issued (Ahmed signed the Emergency declaration that Gandhi had issued shortly before midnight on 25 June).Among Abu's striking works are several cartoons boldly stamped with "Not passed by censors", a stark mark of official one, a man holds a placard that reads "Smile!" - a sly jab at the government's forced-positivity campaigns during the Emergency. His companion deadpans, "Don't you think we have a lovely censor of humour?" - a line that cuts to the heart of state-enforced seemingly innocuous cartoon shows a man at his desk sighing, "My train of thought has derailed." Another features a protester carrying a sign that reads "SaveD democracy" - the "D" awkwardly added on top, as if democracy itself were an afterthought. Abu also took aim at Sanjay Gandhi, the unelected son of Indira Gandhi, who many believed ran a shadow government during the Emergency, wielding unchecked power behind the scenes. Sanjay's influence was both controversial and feared. He died in a plane crash in 1980 - four years before his mother, Indira, was assassinated by her work was intensely political. "I have come to the conclusion that there's nothing non-political in the world. Politics is simply anything that is controversial and everything in the world is controversial," he wrote in Seminar magazine in also bemoaned the state of humour - strained and manufactured - when the press was gagged."If cheap humour could be manufactured in a factory, the public would rush to queue up in our ration shops all day. As our newspapers become progressively duller, the reader, drowning in boredom, clutches at every joke. AIR [India's state-run radio station] news bulletins nowadays sound like a company chairman's annual address. 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Astor offered him a staff position with the paper."You are not cruel like other cartoonists, and your work is the kind I was looking for," he told 1956, at Astor's suggestion, Abraham adopted the pen name "Abu", writing later: "He explained that any Abraham in Europe would be taken as a Jew and my cartoons would take on slant for no reason, and I wasn't even Jewish."Astor also assured him of creative freedom: "You will never be asked to draw a political cartoon expressing ideas which you do not yourself personally sympathise."Abu worked at The Observer for 10 years, followed by three years at The Guardian, before returning to India in the late 1960s. He later wrote he was "bored" of British politics. Beyond cartooning, Abu served as a nominated member of India's upper house of Parliament from 1972 to 1978. In 1981, he launched Salt and Pepper, a comic strip that ran for nearly two decades, blending gentle satire with everyday observations. 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