Financial woes brought by last year's coronavirus pandemic have pushed about 32 million Indians out of the middle class, undoing years of economic gains, a report showed on Thursday, while job losses pushed millions into poverty.
The number of Indians in the middle class, or those earning between $10 and $20 a day, shrunk by about 32 million, compared with the number that could have been reached in the absence of a pandemic, the US-based Pew Research Centre said.
A year into the pandemic, the numbers of those in the middle class has shrunk to 66 million, down a third from a pre-pandemic estimate of 99 million, it added.
"India is estimated to have seen a greater decrease in the middle class and a much sharper rise in poverty than China in the Covid-19 downturn," the Pew Research Centre said, citing the World Bank's forecasts of economic growth. Nearly 57 million people had joined the middle income group between 2011 and 2019, it added.