Introduction
Poverty in India is spread all over the country and India is considered as third poorest region in the world. According to the data by World Bank more than 26% of the Indian population falls below the poverty line of $1.25 per day. According to the report provided by the UN Millennium Development Goals, more than 340 million people would come out of the poverty in both China and India in the next four years and poverty rate in India is likely to drop to 22% by 2015.
There is no such measure to track the poverty line in the Indian economy, but many people especially in the rural India suffer from the poverty. Many government organization and non profit organization have taken initiatives to reduce the poverty in India my taking various steps. Steps includes supply of food in the subsidized rate, loan access at very low interest, improvement in the techniques of agriculture as India is considered as the agricultural country and it is the highest contributor to the GDP of the Indian economy.
Overall Indian economy has shown strength in the economic the last few years with GDP has shown promising number compared to the other emerging countries. The states in India has very diversified rate that is the major difference in the Indian economy. Gujarat is the state that has highest growth among all the states of the country whereas in Madhya Pradesh it is meagre 3.5% during 1999 to 2000.
Corruption
Corruption is one of the most important reasons for the poverty in the Indian economy. Funds which are provided by the central government to the state government for the well being of the people, but the funds are used by the corrupt politicians to fill their pockets and ultimately poor people suffers. Corruption has also impacted the agriculture of the economy and therefore many farmers too suffered from this leading further poverty for the country.
System of Caste
India is diversified country with the highest number of spoken language in a single country so as religion. Caste system has added fuel to the fire of poverty in India. Rural India is facing problem of caste system i.e. low cast people like dalits are not given any job, they ate not involved in any social gathering thus they are financially helpless and increasing the poverty rate in the Indian economy.
Poverty in USA
Current Situation
Many people in and around the continents and subcontinents thinks that America is a place of prosperity and many thinks that it is a land where there are huge opportunity for growth. To some extent it was all true but only few decades ago, not things have changes and Americans are getting poorer. According to the US Census Bureau, every citizen of US were impacted by the financial crisis, and resulted in one in every six Americans below the poverty line. Government started deploying poverty data since 1959 and during that year’s highest number of people were recorded below the poverty line. Total number of people living in poverty reached 2.6 million which includes mainly children. Children in USA depend upon the school meals to escape their hunger.
Difference among Indians and US poverty
American poor are still in much better situation compared to the citizen of India. In US poor family of four still manages to earn around $22,000 which is no ways is considered as the poor in any other economy. If converted into India rupee, we can find most of the family in the middle class earns the same in a year. Standard of living for the US citizen is too high, even poor manages to have microwave, air conditioning, cable television etc for their live hood, but the problem arises when they have to pay for their school bills, health care bill and food bill.
Conclusion
Despite the above cited reason, every year Indian economy adds more than 35 million people in the middle class category. More than 300 million of the total Indian population belongs to the middle class and with the time the number will grow much higher. With the current rate in the growth in the middle class people total number of middle class would reach more than 50% in the coming ten years. With the increase in the total contribution to the social responsibility i.e. (corporate social responsibility) by the corporate and the individual will help in the reduction of poverty in the Indian economy.
Government of US will come out with some or the other option to fight with the increasing poverty in the US. Government took some initiatives which would help poor people to have better standard of living. One such step was the introduction of health reform act, which ensures medicine the health care treatment for the citizen of United States. In the beginning of 2013 government of US took one step again to give the solution for the rising fiscal cliff. Government introduces the policy of higher taxes for the individual having higher income, this would again make poor people to stay away from the taxes instead they would get benefit from the tax payment of rich US citizens. Government can again take many other steps to reduce the poverty in the economy, which is followed by the entire world. Imports are one of the factors because of which country has suffered badly in the recent times. If US can utilize its resources and can produce most of the goods which is imported by the people will help economy to combat unemployment, poverty and this will help the in the increase revenue of the entire nation.
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