Is India a Part of Trump’s Third World?
While he did not list the countries which come under the category of ‘third world’, as per general perception, it refers to poor countries
Chennai: US President Donald Trump’s statement on pausing migration from all Third World Countries has put Indians in a fix. Though there is no official classification as “third-world countries”, if per capita income and India’s non-aligned stance during the Cold War era is considered, India can be categorised as one among them, but not in terms of GDP.
“…Even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the US system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States… Trump said in his post, taking a tough stand on immigration. Indians account for a sizeable share of US immigrants.
While he did not list the countries which come under the category of ‘third world’, as per general perception, it refers to poor countries. US immigration system does not define any country as “third world”.
The term came into common usage after French demographer Alfred Sauvy in a 1952 article titled 'Three Worlds, One Planet' – referring to the countries involved in the Cold War.
As per this, First World countries included the Capitalist countries- the US, NATO allies, Western European nations, Japan and Australia. The Second World was the Communist Soviet Union and allies in Eastern Europe, Cuba and China. All the other countries which took a neutral stand were Third World. India during the era was part of the Non-Alignment Movement and hence a part of the third world.
Later, poor countries in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia were loosely referred to as third world countries. As per today’s classification based on per-capita GDP, this would refer to low income countries and lower-to-middle income countries and India falls in the second group.
However, in general terms, India is an emerging nation with the fourth largest economy.