Lots of figures, no one to make sense of them.

The trade paper, Mint has published a new survey on income distribution, spending, assets and the effect of education in India. The population has been divided into urban, which is divided according to size of cities, and rural and into 5 categories, based on income. "The per capita income of the top quintile, at Rs 7,974 per month, is nearly 6.5 times that of the bottom quintile. Given the lower income and the bigger household size, poorer households end up spending most of what they earn. The poorest quintile is able to save just 10% of household earning. In contrast, the top quintile is able to save 47% of household earning, the survey shows." Which means that not only do the poor earn less in total but because they have larger families the income per head is less than that of the rich. Which naturally reduces their ability to spend and save. The rich, on the other hand, are able to invest more, which adds to their total income. Education makes a big difference, but surprisingly 9% of the top 1% and 9% of the top 10% are illiterates while 46% of the top 1% and only 27% of the top 10% are graduates or above. An earlier survey in 2011 showed that an overwhelming 96.7% of Indians earn less than $10 per day, which would be about Rs 20,000 per month, below the income tax threshold of Rs 250,000 per year. By taking a much higher income level of $13,662, or about Rs 740,000, per year Credit Suisse calculated that only 23.6 million people in India, out of a total population of 1300 million, can be classified as middle class. Not surprising when 65.4 million between the ages of 5 and 19 years have never attended school. On the other hand, 21% of 372,000 beggars in India have passed school, with some post graduates among them. Why? Because there are no jobs. 68,992 people become 25 years old everyday, which is 2.1 million every month. There were 2.3 million applications for 368 jobs of peons in UP last year. If only 46% of the richest 1% of people are graduates or above then it is not surprising that they cannot seek employment in higher posts. The survey says,"The average income of households living in metros, at Rs 26,690, is two-and-a-half times the average income of households living in underdeveloped rural areas." This is completely misleading. They should have compared slums or rag-picker colonies with undeveloped rural areas. Even the average earning or spending figures are misleading because they do not take cost of living into account. Prices of food will be much higher in cities. A vast chunk of income in cities goes in paying rents, which are a complete waste of money and leads to a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. Politicians are happy to promise handouts based on such surveys. Sadly, we do not have good economists to advise on policies and the few that are present are on government payroll. No wonder we remain poor.