Asia | Two wars on want

Will India’s new government turbocharge the fight against poverty?

India and China have taken very different approaches to the problem

An informal squatter settlement in Ranchi, India.
Photograph: Panos Pictures/Simon Townsley
|Hong Kong

When it won its independence in 1947, India suffered from appalling poverty. Campaigning in rural districts, Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister, had seen the “mark of this beast” on every brow. “Life had been crushed and distorted,” he wrote, by “continuous lack and ever-present insecurity”.

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This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Two wars on want”

From the June 8th 2024 edition

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