Photographs: Ahmad Masood/Reuters
India is home to one third of the world's poor, yet the government claims that poverty has fallen over the last few years.
The Planning Commission recently said the number of people living below the poverty line has fallen in both urban and rural areas.
The number of people living below the poverty line has fallen to 21.9 per cent in 2011-12 from 37.2 per cent in 2004-05 on account of increase in per capita consumption.
However, the government's figures showing poverty has been cut by a third since 2004, has set off a row between the political parties. There is a raging debate on the veracity of these calculations.
The government has made a mockery of the system by dishing out figures that make no sense to millions in despair.
For rural areas, the national poverty line is estimated at Rs 816 per capita per month in villages and Rs 1,000 per capita per month in cities in 2011-12. How can the poor afford to make ends meet with such meagre income?
According to UNICEF, one in three malnourished children worldwide are found in India. It also reveals other startling truths. While 42 per cent of children under five years of age are underweight, 58 per cent of children under five surveyed are stunted.
What does economic progress mean when these children are deprived of food and basic necessities? Will these children ever see a better tomorrow?
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
A girl stands at the door of a grocery shop at a slum in New Delhi.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
Boys play with a toy telephone as they react to the camera at a slum in New Delhi.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
A woman washes clothes outside her house at a slum in New Delhi.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
A family living at a slum is pictured in New Delhi.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
A mother feeds her son inside her house at a slum in New Delhi.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
A family sit as children have their meals in an alley at a slum in New Delhi.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
A kitchen is pictured in a house at a slum in New Delhi.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Utpal Baruah/Reuters
A scavenger, surrounded by a flock of Greater Adjutant birds, collects plastic for recycling at a dump site on World Environment Day in Guwahati.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Adnan Abidi/Reuters
A local resident sits on a trunk amid the burnt debris of her hut after a fire broke out in a slum area in New Delhi.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Vivek Prakash/Reuters
Riaz, three-year-old, sits in an open suitcase filled with clothes as his mother wheels it along the side of a highway in Mumbai.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Ahmad Masood/Reuters
A homeless man, wrapped in a quilt, sits in an open space on a cold winter morning in the old quarters of Delhi.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Ahmad Masood/Reuters
Noor Jahan, 5, sleeps on chalk drawings she made as her mother begs for alms at a railway station in Mumbai.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
A A girl playing with her doll looks on outside her house at a slum in New Delhi.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Ahmad Masood/Reuters
Villagers take a nap on a cycle rickshaw near the main entrance for Posco India project area at Kujanga block in Jagatsingpur district in Odisha.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Ahmad Masood/Reuters
A Kashmiri woman looks out from a window at a slum in Srinagar.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Utpal Baruah/Reuters
Children eat their community lunch inside a relief camp near Bilasipara town in Assam.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Adnan Abidi/Reuters
Severely malnourished two-year-old girl Rajni is weighed by health workers at the Nutritional Rehabilitation Centre of Shivpuri district in Madhya Pradesh.
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Children worst hit in poverty-stricken India
Photographs: Parivartan Sharma/Reuters
Suman, a nine-year-old nomad girl from Rajasthan, with her face painted in colours to attract commuters, looks at the camera as she begs for alms at a traffic junction in Noida on the outskirts of New Delhi.
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