Comments

Montek Singh Ahluwalia (22nd May 2023): I congratulate Surjit and his colleagues for setting up this website. I hope it will gain viewers over time given the understandable interest in answering the basic question " is poverty somehow defined, and using some reliable data, actually coming down?" The question can be broadened to ask" are most people getting better off and are they getting better off sufficiently fast? "

The various lenses involved obviously allow for different answers. One can imagine the following questions being answered by different people in different ways in this website.

1) Is poverty going down both unidimensionally and multi dimensionally. There will be many dimensions that are relevant

2) Is Ineqality increasing and if so by what measure? Several lenses here:

(i) Overall inequality ie Gini, Theil etc, or more focussed inequality - the billionaire class at the top, or the top ten percent or the middle class, or those just above the poverty line etc etc

(ii) gender ineguality

(iii) caste inequality

(iv) regional inequality

3) Is whatever it is we are looking at trending differently in India from what is happening abroad?

I look forward to looking in on the website periodically and being educated on all these things.