In an apparent karmic conundrum few have been able to solve so far, Britain's 1.3 million Indians are newly revealed to be doing better than all other community groups, but are still poorer than the white mainstream population. In other words, the Hindujas, Mittals and Swraj Pauls cannot hide the community's real poverty at the bottom end.
“An astonishing 75 per cent of the Indians are in full-time education by the time they are 18 years old,” sociologist Lucinda Platt, author of a landmark new study told this paper. “That compares very favourably with the general British population, just 42 per cent of which is in fulltime education by the age of 18.”
And yet, says Ms Platt, “one-third of all British Indians are in poverty, compared to less than a quarter of the general population”. Wednesday's revelations are contained in 'Parallel Lives', an eponymous book published by the campaigning Child Poverty Action Group.
The book, which looks at poverty levels and its causes across the British population, is described as the first comprehensive survey of the problem.
South Asian immigrant groups feature heavily in the study, with Indians shown to be doing three times as well as Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in terms of education, employment and general well being.
But, Ms Platt insists, “Indians are just not doing as well as they should do given their incredibly high levels of education and skills. There is a glass ceiling effect even in this community which has so many success stories at the top.”
Ms Platt's book, which is expected to be studied carefully by the British government, reveals the stark differences among South Asian groups. Three times as many Pakistani and Bangladeshi children are dirt poor compared to the population as a whole.
Ms Platt said her year-long appraisal of the situation indicated that Britain's under-achieving Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were now lagging far behind almost every other community It is not a pretty picture and adds to the piteous, existing image of poverty and financial exclusion within the two communities.
Unlike the Indians, these two groups have already been found to be twice as likely not to have a bank account than the rest of the population.
Analysts said the book, which has a foreword by Indian academic Bhikhu Parekh, underlined a grim truth-namely that the commonlyused term Asian, for people from the Indian sub-continent, covers many key differences. The argument is likely to find some favour within sections of the Indian community, which has recently begun to campaign for separate categorisation rather than being lumped as Asian with Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.
But sociologists, such as Ms Platt,
caution that Indians are very Asian, at least in terms of being poorer
than the white population.