India is making some progress in reducing poverty. And this article is from July, 2011.
India Makes Some Progress on Poverty
A new report by the United Nations suggests that India is making some progress in reducing poverty. The
UN’s annual Millennium Development Report, which tracks the progress of the international organization’s long-term goals, shows
India’s poverty rate is expected to fall to 22% by 2015 from 51% in 1990. This marks an improvement from last year’s projections, which forecast India’s poverty rate to drop to 24% by that year. The poverty rate is measured by assessing the number of people who live below $1.25 a day, a threshold set by the World Bank.
India’s improved performance has helped reduce poverty globally, the report shows. It estimates that by 2015 the number of people classified as living on less than that amount in developing countries will drop to less than 900 million from around 1.4 billion in 2005. Of these, the report expects around 320 million will be lifted from poverty in India and China.
Although the report praised India’s performance, when it comes to eradicating poverty it is still lagging behind China and other countries in East Asia, which have seen the sharpest reductions in poverty in recent years. While India’s poverty rate is likely to fall to about 22 % in 2015, China’s is projected to fall below 5 % by then, said the report.
The gap is striking, especially considering that in the early 1990s, the two countries had comparative poverty rates. But today, while in India there are presently around 650 million people or about 54 % of the population living below the poverty line, China has now less than 100 million people, or around 8 % of its citizens in the same income bracket, according to a 2010 Asian Development Bank report that sets the poverty bar at $2.
Poverty reduction is the central aim of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, which also include achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and reducing child mortality.
The report was overall positive about meeting its poverty reduction target, aimed at halving the number of the world’s poor between 1990 and 2015: “Based on recently updated projections from the World Bank, the overall poverty rate is still expected to fall below 15 per cent by 2015, indicating that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target can be met.”
Source:
India Makes Some Progress in Reducing Poverty Says UN Millenium Development Report - India Real Time - WSJ
... I will say if we have education, We can get more opportunities. 
