Bs Reporter / New Delhi August 27, 2008, 0:36 IST India has brought down the number of people living below $1 a day by 2 percentage points to 24.3 per cent in three years up to 2005, as Asia's third-largest economy accelerated to 7 per cent plus growth in those years, latest data from the World Bank reveal. In absolute numbers, 9.6 million people came out of poverty between 2002 and 2005, the largest reduction between two consecutive surveys released by the World Bank since 1981. If $1.25 per day is taken as a benchmark for defining the poverty line, then 4.7 million came out of poverty in this period. Since the data reported by the World Bank have a time lag of three years, the effect of increase in food and commodity prices