Pandemic have pushed about 32 million Indians out of the middle class.

     Written by : SMTV24x7 | Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 12:51 PM

Pandemic have pushed about 32 million Indians out of the middle class.

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.