Longstanding development issues are revisited in the light of a newly-constructed data set of poverty measures for India spanning 60 years, including 20 years since reforms began in earnest in 1991. The study finds a downward trend in poverty measures since 1970, with an acceleration post-1991,...

There has been much debate about how much India's poor have shared in the economic growth unleashed by economic reforms in the 1990s. Datt and Ravallion argue that India has probably maintained its 1980s rate of poverty reduction in the 1990s. However, there is considerable diversity in...