Likely true, but it also depends on how you define it. The OPHI (Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative) has been tracking what they call "multidimensional poverty", which is a holistic view of poverty over health, education, and living standards, and is far more insightful than the X dollars a day metrics. They have found the poverty rate (and destitute rate) in India is very high and is comparable to that of Sub Saharan Africa: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/14/poverty-india-...
This doesn't prove the Economist's claim per se, but it indicates to me that it's not absurd.
A lot of the extreme poverty in India is concentrated in the northeast and in rural populations, so it's not always super visible to visitors outside the segregated slums of cities.
This doesn't prove the Economist's claim per se, but it indicates to me that it's not absurd.
A lot of the extreme poverty in India is concentrated in the northeast and in rural populations, so it's not always super visible to visitors outside the segregated slums of cities.