Many social media users are sharing a screenshot of a news website stating that the World Bank has removed India from the list of the developing nations and India will now be in the lower-middle-income category.
The text embedded in the image reads, “वर्ल्ड बैंक ने हटाया भारत के विकासशील देश का टैग, अब पाक, जांबिया और घाना जैसे देशों के बराबर रखा वर्ल्ड बैंक ने भारत को लेकर विकासशील देशों का तमगा हटा दिया है। अब भारत लोअर मिडिल इनकम कैटेगरी में गिना जाएगा।”
(English translation: World Bank has removed India from the category of a developing country, now India is placed at par with countries like Pakistan, Zambia and Ghana. Now India will be counted in the lower-middle-income category.”)
The link to the post can be seen here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile did a fact-check and found the claim to be misleading.
On searching Google with appropriate keywords, we found the same report was published by Jansatta on June 5, 2016. The report said that World Bank has removed India from the category of developing nation. The report further read that India will now be at par with nations like Pakistan, Zambia and Ghana.
We further searched with other keywords and found a report published by The Economic Times on May 31, 2016. The report suggested that the World Bank was looking for a more precise description of economies. Hence, the more specific definitions aimed at categorising economies that though ‘developing’ in character, differ dramatically from one another. For instance, India, Mexico and Malawi may be hardly comparable even if a few economic and social parameters overlap.
We found The FirstPost had also published the report on June 3, 2016. The report quoted World Bank Data Scientist Tariq Khokhar, who said, “In our World Development Indicators publication, we’ve stopped grouping low- and middle-income countries together as ‘developing countries’. For analytical purposes, India continues to be classified as lower-middle-income economy.”
Hence, we can ascertain that an old report is being shared with a misleading context.
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