Poverty has been ever-present in India since Independence, but recent policy stands to change the status quo. Multiple undertakings and initiatives have raised the standard of living for those below the poverty line, but narratives continue to emerge that India's poor are getting poorer. A paper, written by Arvind Virmani, Surjit Bhalla, and Karan Bhasin, aims to find the poverty and distributional consequences of the government's pandemic support measures. The main argument of the paper is that extreme poverty was kept low in India despite the pandemic. It presents estimates of poverty and consumption inequality in India from 2004-05 to 2020-21. Surjit Bhalla is an Indian economist, author and columnist, who is currently the Executive Director for India at the International Monetary Fund. He was also the part-time Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. Karan Bhasin is a New York-based researcher with interests in Macroeconomics, Indian Economy, Institutional Economics and Political Economy. He has also appeared on multiple Bharatvaarta episodes speaking about his papers and findings in the economic field. In this episode, they speak about their paper, findings, methodologies and of the state of poverty in India.
