India, Nov. 1 -- India's poverty decline in comparative contemporary history.

The latest World Bank data describe one of the largest and fastest reductions in mass poverty ever recorded. Between 2011 and 2023, India's extreme-poverty rate fell from 27.1% to 2.6% under the current $3.00-aday international poverty line, while the share below the $4.20 lower-middle income line fell from 57.7% to 16.1%-an estimated 496 million people rising above that threshold.

This is not merely an Indian economic statistic. Placed beside China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Brazil, it marks a decisive shift in the social history of the Global South: the movement of hundreds of millions from subsistence insecurity into a fragile but expanding world of markets, ...