Actually, $2/day is actually completely manageable in rural India. I mean you won't be eating fancy stuff, but you'd be nowhere as miserable as being alone/homeless in the US.
I'm not surprised. There are one or two particular foreign-crazed states in India where people often spend ~$50k on people to smuggle them across into Western Europe/US. They come apparently as refugees "fleeing religious persecution", but I fear this is often a mere ruse.
The routes they takes are often batshit crazy - the usual Afghanisthan-Egypt/Turkey-Europe route or the Guyana-Mexico-Texas/Cali route (this all the way from India!).