Quotes of the Day

Visit an Indian slum and you'll often find spotless floors, gleaming pots and clean school uniforms hanging from the wall. The inhabitants have food, a roof and the means to educate their children. Those are the indicators India has often used to distinguish the merely hard up from the truly poor — an underclass that was reckoned at 27.5% of the 1.1 billion population. Activists have long ridiculed the figure as a gross underestimate, and indeed it was. A revision by India's Planning Commission has just added 100 million to the ranks of the impoverished, pushing the proportion to 37%. Because of inflation largely driven by surging food prices, rural poverty is now defined as the ability to spend 447 rupees (about $10) on basic goods every month. By widening the pool of people eligible for food subsidies, that shift will impact the nation's coffers. It also delivers a reality check to those Indians, and foreigners, mesmerized by the country's economic growth and global profile. Some 400 million Indian poor have long known better.

• Jyoti Thottam
• 4|18|10: New Delhi