Rajsamand and New Delhi, India – Hema Prajapat, 25, says even “thorns growing inside her stomach” would not hurt as much as hunger does.

By the end of each month, her kitchen shelves are empty; her husband, Hari Prajapat, sinks deeper into debt; and an increasing share of their food supplies is set aside for their nine-year-old son, Divyansh.

But Hema’s family is no longer poor – at least on paper.

She spends 11,000 rupees ($117) a month on her household of three. That is about 49 percent more than the roughly 7,380 rupees ($78) monthly threshold for a family of that size, based on the World Bank’s poverty line.

India, the world’s most populous country, no longer counts its poor. It has not published an official consumption-based poverty estimate in more than a decade. That leaves the World Bank to provide internationally comparable estimates, using newer consumption surveys and its own poverty thresholds.

A recent World Bank report says India lifted nearly 500 million people out of poverty between 2011 and 2023, with extreme poverty dropping from 27.1 percent to 2.6 percent during the period.

The only comparable poverty-reduction effort on this scale was achieved by China, which lifted more than 800 million people out of extreme poverty over four decades.

Several economists have said India’s achievement is significant, and that the World Bank’s mechanism for calculating these numbers is beyond reproach, even as they have argued that the planet’s most populous nation still has a long way to go before it can claim to have defeated poverty.

Other economists have questioned the World Bank’s sweeping conclusions and India’s unwillingness under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to carry out its own poverty estimates.

But masked by that largely academic and political split is the lived reality of millions of Indians who have crossed the supposed poverty threshold yet lead a life marked by persistent deprivation, and a precarity that leaves families one shock away from losing everything that matters to them.

“This poverty line, this bar, is very low. No person can live a dignified life [on this amount],” Hema told Al Jazeera, sitting in a small garden where she moonlights as a caretaker.

“Did they even get out of their AC cars?” she asked, taking a dig at the officials who prepared the report for the World Bank.

‘Money now vanishes’

India, home to 1.4 billion people, is one of the fastest-growing global economies – the fourth-largest by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), despite repeated recent shocks including the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

It is also one of the world’s most unequal countries, with the top 1 percent of its population owning 40 percent of its wealth –  a concern highlighted in the World Bank report as well.

Hema was 11 when she was married off to a man who belongs to a family of traditional clay-pot makers in Rajsamand district of Rajasthan state.

When pot sales could no longer meet their financial needs, her husband, Hari, started a street food stall selling pani puri, a popular Indian snack. That did not last long because of the pandemic.

Hema started to look for work.

For the past year, she has been cleaning houses and washing utensils in the neighbourhood for 5,000 rupees ($53) a month, but the deprivation did not end.

“We have to buy every single thing from the market,” she said. The family has no agricultural land.

The World Bank pointed to rising female labour force participation as one of the factors behind India’s improving poverty rates, although women’s access to secure and adequately paid employment remains a challenge.

“Since I started working, our home has seen some comfort, but the money is now vanishing faster, and we are even more in debt,” Hema said, adding that she is unable to figure out the maths behind it.

“The prices have multiplied in recent years, and whatever we earn falls short,” she told Al Jazeera.

The World Bank also noted that the Indian government’s provision of free or subsidised foodgrains to nearly 800 million citizens every month under its national food-security programme has helped tackle extreme poverty.

But a rising cost of living has meant that government subsidies and handouts are racing against growing economic pressures on families like Hema’s. India’s overall consumer prices rose by at least 51 percent between September 2016 and September 2025, according to the government’s Consumer Price Index. Wage rises in this period have not kept pace.

Some government schemes help, such as public schools for children or state-run hospitals that provide free or subsidised healthcare.

But Hema says free healthcare does not inspire much confidence in people. When her son Divyansh had a bad cold and the flu two months ago, she rushed him to a private hospital as waiting times at public hospitals are often longer, with crowded wards, overstretched doctors and limited resources.

“I was scared for him. His fever was getting worse,” she said.

Treatment at the private hospital cost Hema about 6,000 rupees ($64) – more than what she makes in a month. “I do not want my son to get used to private hospitals or their drugs. I cannot take him to one every time,” she said.

‘One shock’ away from poverty

Millions of Indian households that appear to be rising above the World Bank’s poverty threshold live on the edge, desperately trying to avoid being pushed back.

Santosh Mehrotra, a developmental economist in New Delhi, said the poverty threshold in India is too low. All it takes is “one shock” to be pushed back into it, he said. “That shock could be a pandemic, drought, flood, or even a wedding.”

Hema’s neighbour Sushila Salvi received one such shock.

In December last year, Salvi, 31, realised she was “finally pregnant” again – her second child after a gap of 14 years. Salvi did not trust government hospitals and wanted to get all her treatment at a private clinic.

In some ways, she had prepared for it. Over the previous eight years, she learned makeup skills and opened a small, one-seater salon in Kankroli, a small town in Rajsamand. She had been saving for her 14-year-old daughter’s higher education. The daughter currently goes to a government school.

“But when I got pregnant, I could not rely on government hospitals,” she said.

Maternal care cost her nearly 65,000 rupees ($695) and drained her savings. She had to pull her daughter out of extra tuition classes that cost her 600 rupees ($6) a month.

Mehrotra, who previously worked with the government on rural economies and poverty, said the World Bank’s poverty threshold is “also problematic because it does not draw a distinction between the rural and the urban populations” despite their different realities.

Seema Kumar, 37, lives on the outskirts of New Delhi and spends 20,000 rupees ($214) on her family of three.

She turns to loans when expenses spiral, such as during a festival or her 17-year-old son’s birthday.

But some shocks come unseen.

As India celebrated Diwali, a festival of lights, last week, and people burst firecrackers, air quality in New Delhi – one of the world’s most polluted cities – hit a record.

The next morning, as dense and toxic smog hung over the city, all three members of Seema’s family left for work. By evening, her son had developed a sore throat, everyone in the family had a runny nose, and Seema went to bed with a terrible headache.

“I could not buy a mask for my son, and they say I am not poor any more,” Seema told Al Jazeera.

Back in Rajsamand, as Hema swept the garden in her neighbourhood, she called Hari, her husband, reminding him that their child was due for a routine medical checkup that day.

Hari said he could not afford to refill petrol any more due to the increase in oil prices caused by the conflict in the Middle East. Hema offered to refill his motorcycle’s tank to go to the nearest hospital.

“My only hope is that my son makes something out of his life,” said Hema. “If I do not work for a single day – let alone a month – we can go back to the days of extreme poverty and deprivation.”