A Poverty Free India, Within Our Lifetime
When India got independent in 1947, 70 per cent of our population lived in poverty. Even as our population has increased, our poverty rate has dropped from 70 per cent to 30 per cent. We have pulled a large number of people out of poverty in absolute terms. But still, the number of people living in poverty is not less, and there are still hundreds of millions of people struggling to meet ends. As India marches towards 2047, there is an urgent need to have an action plan to fight poverty.
Atul Satija, Founder & CEO of The/Nudge Institute, is confident that we can witness a poverty-free Indian within our lifetime. Satija believes that today, India has a lot of young people who want to do philanthropy and not wait till their retirement.
Moreover, he says that there is now that social consciousness among people that had been missing for some time or was probably muted before the pandemic. From India’s growth story, he shares examples of the microfinance revolution, Aadhaar and the UPI. He says that the journey of these initiatives is insanely inspiring because they took a problem and created a large-scale social transformation. “Such journeys are essential for India to get out of poverty in the next 25 years,” says Satija.
Watch him elaborate on the strategies and framework required to pull India out of poverty by 2047.
