This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 2nd, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

Policy elites in India are asking the wrong question, says Cato Institute Research Fellow Swami I.

Rather than asking how to make rapid GDP growth

trickle down to lower income people,

they should be asking how best to improve the business climate

for the poor,

so they can earn their own living and drive

that GDP ever higher.

GDP had accelerated in India in the last 10 years or so to earlier it was doing about

five and a half to after six percent the last

ten it went up to about eight and a half percent per year and what people are

always asked was yeah that's all very well.

But was it just a few rich people who benefited?

That was the criticism.

Well, the latest living standard survey

just come out for fiscal year 2010, it shows there has been a record

reduction of poverty. Poverty earlier was falling at the rate of about 0.7

percentage points per year.

In these last five years, it fell by 1.5 percentage points per year.

Almost twice the rate it was falling earlier.

So the answer seems to be clear that the best antidote to poverty is fast GDP growth.

And this should be expected, at least based upon principles of economics, the people in order

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