Experts are quibbling, but what is the reality? India may have joined the league of hottest growth economies, but the jury is still out on whether the glass of poverty alleviation is half full, or half empty.

The Asian Development Bank on Wednesday offered a new measure of poverty — earning of $1.35 per day on purchasing power parity — which puts more than half of India’s 1.1-billion population in the category of poor.

According to ADB, about 54.8 per cent of the country’s population earned less than $1.35 a day in 2005. The estimates came a day after the World Bank released a study that used earning of $1.25 a day as the poverty line, and showed that the poverty ratio in India fell from 60 per cent to 42 per cent between 1981 and 2005.

By the Indian government’s yardstick, a tad less than a quarter of country’s population are poor.