The author argues that the claim by individual governments and by the World Bank that Asia has seen a large reduction in poverty over the last three decades, is a spurious claim. It is the result of a logical mistake, namely de-linking without any explanation, the definition of poverty from satisfaction of nutrition norms, so that in practice the poor are being improperly counted below a steadily declining standard of food consumption. Using nearly 50 years of data from India's National Sample Survey, she shows that applying a constant nutrition standard over time, poverty had worsened considerably over the period of neoliberal reforms.
About the Author
Utsa Patnaik taught economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, from 1973 to 2010. Her main research interests lie in the areas of the agrarian question both in history and at present, colonialism and imperialism, and the origins and estimation of poverty. These issues have been explored in over one hundred academic papers and several books. Her last two books (along with Prabhat Patnaik) are A Theory of Imperialism (2016) and Capital and Imperialism (2021).
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