Actually, this post demonstrates just how poor your reading comprehension is.
Apparently you didn’t even bother reading your own evidence.
Let me explain this in a manner that even you will understand.
- Go to page 55
- Look at the nice colorful picture at the bottom of the page.
- Look at the 2005 column within that picture.
- Notice how strivers and seekers (who according to this graph, comprise the middle class, and correspond with incomes between INR 200,000-1,000,000/year) made up 5% of the population.
If anything, my 5-10% estimate was generous. Also, if you recall, you’re currently trying to defend the ludicrous idea that there currently are 300 million+ people in India (27% of the population) with incomes comparable to that of the American middle class? Please point out where the report says that.
Actually I started with a comment lampooning the Indian government for demonstrating its priorities by diverting tens of millions of dollars of development funds and evicting 100,000+ poor people from their homes in order to put on a display display of economic well-being and success at the Commonwealth Games. I never mentioned the “middle class” till your compatriots brought it up.
First of all, I was speaking about the situation in India today, not what may happen 50 years down the road. In any case, these pie in the sky projections are from 2007 and predate the global economic recession, so I doubt the authors of the paper would stand by their original estimates today. Even if we do accept their projections as unquestionable fact, it’s clear that you weren’t able to understand the paper. In 2015, the authors projected that 20% of India’s population would be “middle class,” while 35% would be “deprived”/poor, so even according to your own source the middle class still would not have overtaken the poor by 2015.
At the end of the day, despite having the “second fastest growing economy in the world,” India’s position on the global Human Development Index has actually fallen over the past decade. As the United Nations World Food Program has pointed out, malnutrition and starvation are on the rise too: "The fact that calorie deprivation is increasing during a period when the proportion of rural population below the poverty line is claimed to be declining rapidly, highlights the increasing disconnect between official poverty estimates and calorie deprivation."
There’s absolutely no need to “twist the facts” when the reality of the situation is so abysmal.