Likely true, but it also depends on how you define it. The OPHI (Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative) has been tracking what they call "multidimension

Likely true, but it also depends on how you define it. The OPHI (Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative) has been tracking what they call "multidimensional poverty", which is a holistic view of poverty over health, education, and living standards, and is far more insightful than the X dollars a day metrics. They have found the poverty rate (and destitute rate) in India is very high and is comparable to that of Sub Saharan Africa: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/14/poverty-india-africa-oxford https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/14/poverty-india-... This doesn't prove the Economist's claim per se, but it indicates to me that it's not absurd. A lot of the extreme poverty in India is concentrated in the northeast and in rural populations, so it's not always super visible to visitors outside the segregated slums of cities.