NEW DELHI: The Congress expressed concerns on Sunday over a recent World Bank report that said poverty and inequality remain concerningly high in India, and requested the Centre to take steps, including bringing in GST reforms and ending corporate favouritism.Citing the World Bank’s poverty and equity brief for India in April 2025, Congress general secretary, communications, Jairam Ramesh said three months after its release, the Narendra Modi government’s “drumbeaters and cheerleaders have begun spinning the World Bank’s data to make the staggeringly out-of-touch claim that India is among the world’s most equal societies”.He said in a statement issued on April 27, the Congress had highlighted some of the key concerns that the World Bank had raised in its report.”These concerns continue to be relevant, and any attempt to engage with the report must grapple with them seriously,” the Congress leader said.He said the World Bank report highlights that wage disparity is high in India, with the median earnings of the top 10 per cent being 13 times higher than the bottom 10 per cent in 2023-24.”Moreover, ‘sampling and data limitations suggest that consumption inequality (as measured by government data) may be underestimated’.”More updated data (adoption of purchasing power parity conversion factor from 2021 as compared to that of 2017) would result in a higher rate of extreme poverty,” Ramesh said in a statement, citing the report.He said the report also stated that changes in the questionnaire design, survey implementation and sampling in the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2022-23 “present challenges for making comparisons over time”.”As a lower middle-income country, the appropriate rate to measure poverty in India is that of USD 3.65/day. By this measure, the poverty rate for India in 2022 is significantly higher at 28.1 per cent,” Ramesh said, citing the report.”The report is therefore rather clear: poverty remains concerningly high, and so does inequality,” the former Union minister added.He said the good news that the Centre is so desperately trying to wrangle out of this report is partly attributable to the limited availability and uncertain quality of government data as well as to the selection of benchmarks to measure poverty.”No country that has a poverty rate of 28.1 per cent can make a justifiable claim to being one of the most equal societies in the world,” the Congress leader said.He added that in the statement issued by his party in April, “we had also outlined several takeaways for Indian policymakers from the report. These also continue to remain relevant”.
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