Are the world's poorest people getting richer or poorer?

I am having difficulty understanding the claims of a recent article from the Times of India claiming that the number of desperately poor people in the world has increased with previous reports about a UN paper which claimed that the world's poor were less in number now than previously. Curious... maybe the difference is just in the places and people that were looked at, the time period used and the statistics cited, but I still find it rather curious.