India pulled 500m people out of poverty. Many of them still barely survive

Rajsamand and New Delhi, India – Hema Prajapat, 25, says even “thorns growing inside her stomach” would not hurt as much as hunger does. By the end of each month, her kitchen shelves are empty; her husband, Hari Prajapat, sinks deeper into debt; and an increasing share of their food supplies is set aside for their nine-year-old son, Divyansh. She spends 11,000 rupees ($117) a month on her household of three. That is about 49 percent more than the roughly 7,380 rupees ($78) monthly threshold for a family of that size, based on the World Bank’s poverty line. India, the world’s most populous country, no longer counts its poor. It has not published an official consumption-based poverty estimate in more than a decade.