Headline news in much of the country’s media in the month of June，blazoned a 50% increase in the number of millionaires in India. This was among the sharpest rates of increase that any country had witnessed. And yet with all this，the total number of millionaires in India in 2009 stood at just over 120，000，a paltry number for a country of 1.2 billion people.^[1]If the importance given to a matter involving this number should seem an index of skewed priorities，the point as emphasised by Merrill Lynch Wealth Management，which carried out the study，was different. Despite the financial turbulence in the world economy，levels of wealth among high-net worth individuals had increased. This pointed to the sound underpinnings of the growth story，said Merrill Lynch，adding for reassurance that India’s wealth is not a bubble，since “Asia has caught up with Europe in terms of its high-net worth population and their wealth”.

Just in case it were to be thought that India’s growth story is just about the creation of millionaires，the Union Government has over recent months been showing great seriousness of intent in increasing budgetary commitments towards basic human needs. Early in August，Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee spoke of a possible outlay of Rs 2.31 billion （Rs 2，31，000 crore） over three years to create the infrastructure that would make the right to education a reality for all Indians. Following this，the next two priorities of the Government he said，would be to make the rights to food and health operative. This level of ambition he said，would have been beyond imagination in the 1980s when the Government，despite best intentions，found itself stymied in all efforts to directly address poverty. What had made the unthinkable a distinct possibility was the turning of a page in the 1990s，which made India’s contemporary and ongoing growth story a reality.^[2]

Just how farIndia needs to go in terms of basic needs fulfilment became starkly clear when the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative （OPHDI），announced a significant reformulation of the measure of poverty，which will be integrated into the twentieth edition of the U.N. Development Programme’s authoritative annual publication：the Human Development Report. The headlines here，coming soon after the cheerful news on India’s millionaires being a fast-growing tribe，were distinctly unflattering. Working with a wider definition of poverty than has so far been customary，the OPHDI found that the eight poorest states of India have no fewer than 421 million people deprived of the basic requirements of a decent life. Indeed，the number of the poor in just these eight Indian states is higher than in the 26 poorest countries of Africa. The intensity of poverty in Africa is greater；but its magnitude in just eight states of India is wider.^[3]