The new non-poor: 13.5 crore Indians PM Modi said were lifted out of poverty in his first term

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his Independence Day address that in the first five-year term of his government, “13.5 crore of my fellow poor brothers and sisters have broken free from the chains of poverty and entered the new middle class”.

Later in the speech, he said, “When poverty reduces…the power of the middle-class section…increases manifold… Today the 13.5 crore people who have come out of poverty have in a way become the middle class. When the purchasing power of the poor increases, the power of the middle class to carry out business grows too…”