Shame: In crime capital UP, 8% of world's poor lives

Lucknow, March 13: Uttar Pradesh is infamous for being the crime hub of India. Now, another shameful fact about the state has emerged. According to World Bank's statistics, 8 percent of world's poor people lives in Uttar Pradesh.

This was revealed by World Bank group president Jim Yong Kim on Tuesday, during his visit to the state. "8 per cent of the world's people living in extreme poverty and we have to be successful in U.P," revealed Kim.

"Without being successful in Uttar Pradesh, we cannot be successful in the world in our fundamental objective of ending poverty in this generation," added Kim.

Kim addressed a joint press conference with chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

"In ending poverty we think that, once and for all, we will remove this stain from the consciousness of all of us in the world. It is not right that people live on less than our level, which is $25 a day," added the World Bank chief.

The chief minister of UP asked the World Bank chief for $3.5 billion (nearly Rs. 20,000 crore) assistance for various projects in the state.

"We had a positive discussion. I hope that Uttar Pradesh would get the support of World Bank so that development and infrastructure projects can move forward," said Akhilesh Yadav.

"I have observed that there is extreme focus at all levels of the union government on putting in place a plan that would lead to economic growth in the future," said Kim on economic road map of India.

"And the government understands that a lot of investment is required. India has an infrastructure deficit of $1 trillion during the next five years and the government has plans to get 53% of this investment from the public sector and 47% from the private sector. We call this approach new, courageous and absolutely correct."

OneIndia News