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LONDON, ENGLAND, January 23, 2003: In a conundrum few have been able to unravel, Britain’s 1.3 million Indians are newly revealed to be doing better than all other community groups, but still remaining poorer than the white mainstream population. “An astonishing 75 per cent of the Indians are in full-time education by the time they are 18 years old,” says sociologist Lucinda Platt, author of a landmark new study. “That compares very favorably with the general British population, just 42 per cent of which is in full-time education by age 18”. And yet, said 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 on Wednesday 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. Platt insisted, “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.” Analysts said that the book underlined a grim truth, namely that the commonly-used term “Asian” for people from the Indian sub-continent covered many key differences.

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