An uncertain glory by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen
India and its contradictions
Growth rates of India’s GDP at constant prices
(% of year)
Colonial period 0.9 GDP & 0.1 Per capita GDP
1950-60 3.5 GDP & 1.8 per Capita GDP
2000 - 2010 7.6 GDP
& 6.0 per Capita GDP
Life expectancy in India today (about 66 years)
is more than twice what it was in 1951 (32 years)
Infant mortality is about one fourth of what is
used to be
Female literacy rate has gone from 9 per cent to
65 percent
Indian can be proud of its huge circulation of
newspapers 9the largest in the world) and a vast lively stream, of radio and TV
coverage, presenting many different analysis of ongoing politics
The failing of the media, concern a lack of
serious involvement in the diagnosis of significant injustice and
inefficiencies in the economic and social lives of people and also the absence
of high quality journalism. By enriching the content of the coverage and
analysis of news, the Indian media could certainly be turned into a major asset
in the pursuit of justice, equity and efficiency in democratic India
Fast economic growth is often celebrated, it is
extremely important to point to the fact that the societal reach of economic
progress in India has been remarkably limited. India has relatively stagnant wages
and no less importantly the public revenue generated by rapid economic growth
has not been used to expand the social and physical infrastructure in a
determined and well-planned way. There is a also a continued lack of essential
social services (from schooling to health care to the provision of safe water
and drainage) for a huge part of the population.
20 years ago India has the second best social
indicators among 6 south Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka,
Nepal and Bhutan), it now looks second worst (ahead only of Pakistan)
Nearly a third of population is not connected
with electricity
At the risk of oversimplification, it can be
argued that the main respects in which the agenda for ‘political, economic and
social democracy’ remains unfinished related to two areas:
1. Continued disparity between the lives of privileges
and the rest,
2. Persistent and ineptitude and
unaccountability in the way the Indian economy and society are organized.
- Even after two decades of rapid growth, India is still one of the poorest countries in the world. India’s real income per head is still lower than most of countries outside sub-Saharan Africa. The picture is even worse if we focus on the quality of life of the underprivileged part of the Indian population, hundreds of millions of whom continue to lack the essential requirements of satisfactory living, from nutritious food to health care, decent work conditions and warm clothes in the winter.
Adam Smith thought India in general,
particularly Bengal, was one of the most prosperous regions on the globe and he
devoted sometime in the Wealth of nations to explaining mostly its flourishing
system of trade, utilizing its navigable rivers.
When the East India Company initiated through
the battle of Plessey in Bengal, in 1757, the region was famous for its
industrial exports, particularly of textiles of various kinds. Comparison of
wage rates and prices seem to indicate that the real wages of Indian labor
(skilled artisans) in economically active regions were not lower, indeed
sometimes higher than those then enjoyed by corresponding groups in many
European countries. Long periods during the epochal British rule per capita
real income of India actually declined.
India's recent growth improved living standards
of the ‘middle class (which tends to mean the top 20% or so of the population
by income) have improved well beyond expected. But the story is more complex
for many others such as the rickshaw puller, domestic worker or brick-kiln laborer.
For them, and other underprivileged groups, the reform period has not been so
exciting. Not only, it did not improve at all, but the pace of change has been
excruciatingly slow and has barely altered their abysmal living conditions.
head count ratio of rural poverty declined from
about 50% in 1993-3 to 34% in 2009-10. However, it is not actually so. The clue
lies in the so called ‘density effect: the fact that many people are just a
little below the official poverty line, so that a small increase in per capita
expenditure is enough to lift them above the line.
there has been little improvement in India’s
nutrition indicators during the last twenty years or so.
China devotes 2.7% of GDP to gov. expenditure on
healthcare, compared to India's relatively miserable 1.2%.
Looking ahead, two major problems facing the
Indian economy can be summed up as follows
1. Removing the sharp disparities that divide
the country into the privileged and the rest, while continuing to encourage
overall economic growth and expansion
2. Bringing more accountability to the running
of the economy, particularly in the delivery of public services and the
operation of the public sector.
A number of Indian states (Kerala & Tamil
Nadu for example) would be at the top of the South Asian comparison if they
were treated as separate countries and others (UP, MP for example) would do
enormously worse. Multi-dimensional index (MPI) places states like Bihar, and
Jharkhand in the same group as some of the poorest African Countries. In terms
of MPI, the seven states (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, MP, Orissa, Rajasthan
and UP) are more or less on a par with the 27 poorest countries of Africa. And
have roughly the same population. What is interesting is that Kerala continues
to make rapid progress on many fronts and that its lead over the other states
shows no sign of diminishing over time. In fact it has even accelerated with
help from rapid economic growth, which in turn has been assisted by Kerala’s
focus on elementary education and other basic capabilities. Tamil Nadu has some
of the best public services among all Indian states and many of them are
accessible to all on a non-discriminatory basis.
Pricing policies of many other sources of power,
such as petrol and diesel with the same implicit priority being given to the
relatively affluent, rather than those who have little means to make
significant use of artificially cheapened fuel. Attempted reduction of petrol
or diesel subsidies tend to generate a huge outcry from the powerful lobbies of
the biggest consumers and are often abandoned within a few days. Populist
policies are actually of little use to the bulk of population.
A similar point applied again to the fertilizer
subsidy which has been enormous drain on India’s public finance for a long
time, costing about 1.5% of GDP whereas public health was less than 1.5% of
GDP. While the fertilizer subsidy possibly played a useful role when it
was introduced in the late 1970s, it would hard to justify today - esp. given
its distributional regressive nature as well as its adverse environmental
impact.
The case against regressive subsidies rests
partly on the possibility of making much better use of the same resources for
the benefits of underprivileged. For instance, very confusing use is often made
of terms such as ‘middle class or aadm aadmi to protect relatively privileged
groups as underdogs. The real underdogs, meanwhile hardly figure in the entire
debate.
The ‘Revenue Forgone’ statement by the Finance
Ministry remains it to be an astounding 5% of the GDP.
Three different issues are central to the
prevalence of corruption in public services. First, corruption flourishes in
informational darkness: by nature, it is secretive affair. The second issue
(that of social leniency) is also indirectly helped by greater transparency of
information,. For use of ‘naming and shaming’ demands naming before shaming can
be attempted. The third is effective prosecution that very little has been done
so far (conviction rates are so ‘ridiculously low’).
When Britishers left, adult literacy rate was
only around 18%. Around 20% of Indian children between ages of 6 & 14 years
were not attending school even in 2005 -6. When the oldest European university,
Bologna, was found in 1088, Nalanda was already more than 600 years old. Nalanda
(Buddhist foundation) was an ancient center of advanced learning that attracted
students from world over (Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and rest of
Asia as well as few from Turkey. Nalanda, a residential university had ten
thousand students in its dormitories, in the 7th century.(Another Buddhist
Takshila (now in Pakistan) another such institute, but offered religious
studies on Buddhism)
Even with long history of education, the fact
remains that the achievement of higher education of contemporary Indian
universities are rather limited. None of Indian institutions listed under 200 (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2013-14/world-ranking)
Even though Indian authorities have resisted the
country’s inclusion in international comparisons of pupil achievements, some
recent studies make it possible to compare Indian students with others such as
PISA Plus survey conducted in 2009. Indian performance comes out very much at
the bottom of the 74 countries or economies included in this survey. And this
is the case even though the two Indian states that participate in PISA Plus
happened to be two of the better schooled states (Tamil Nadu & Himachal
Pradesh) and this is for all categories - reading, math, science.
The classic problem of school education in India
has been underfunding by the state. Accountability is the other main problems
in the delivery of school education. Absenteeism by teachers, reluctant to
teach, Salaries of Gov. Teachers in India are now well out of line with private
sector norms as well as with International patterns. Consider primary-school
teacher salaries as a ratio per capita of GDP. In 2001, China teacher’s salary
was around same (1) same as Bangladesh (in 2012). UP teacher’s salary is 6.4
times and Bihar teachers salary is 5.9 times in 2012.
India’s best newspapers with a creditable record
of coverage of social issues in general, issues of health were rarely
discussed. India’s immunization rates are uniformly lower than the corresponding
averages for sub-Saharan Africa or the least developed countries at the same
time, Bangladesh has achieved immunization rates of around 85 % for each
vaccine.
Public expenditure on health in India has
hovered around 1% of GDP for most of the last 20 years and only 9 countries in
the world spend a lower ratio of public expenditure on health to GDP when
compared with India (China spends 2.7, Latin America spends 3.8 and world
average is 6.5 % of GDP).
Indian is estimated to have some 86,000
newspapers and periodicals with a circulation of more than 370 million -
significantly more than any other country in the world. It is also a country in
which newspapers are growing in number and in circulation, contrast with the
worldwide trend of decreasing newspaper circulation and revenue. Perhaps
the biggest barrier to the free operation of the media in democratic India lies
in its partiality in favor of the rich and the powerful, which is widespread in
its coverage of news and analysis from across the country. There are complex
biases can be detected, but the obvious is a serious lack of interest in the
lives of the Indian poor. Media is a advertisement-driven business (MD of Times of India
said, we are not in newspaper business, but in advertisement business).
One of the leading magazine editors commented,
“Mainstream media is reluctant to investigate corporate because of their
advertising potential. Proliferation of paid news - the phenomenon of paying
newspapers or TV channels to report certain facts has also brought out some
deeply disturbing aspects of news coverage’s in India.
The privileged group in India includes not only
businessmen and the professional classes, but also the bulk of the country’s
relatively affluent, including educated classes. Among the relatively
affluent, some are more so and some far less. Entire group of the relatively
privileged stand well above the lot of the underprivileged majority of the
Indians.
National Food security Bill (right to eat)
tabled by the gov in the parliament in 2011 was immediately attacked and
withdrawn. It would cost 0.3 % of the GDP, but would have helped 2 third of the
population (in 2013, it passed). Petroleum and fertilizer subsidies is
around 1.7 % of GDP and 5.7% of the GDP was lost by withdrawing tax on imported
gold and gems (due to business and media influence).
The fog of obscurity has been so strong about
the incidence and intensity of extreme suffering that the very idea of common
people- the object of immediate support from vocal political leaders - has
undergone a vast redefinition. The relatively affluent who are not yet less
affluent than the really rich very often tend to see themselves as ‘ ordinary
people’ - Aam Aadmi in Hindi- whose self-vision places them as a underdogs of
society which can be a fitting description only if we compare them with the top
layer of the really prosperous.
In an insightful remark, George Lindsay
Johnstone, one of the early East Indian Company officials, said in London Parliament
in 1801, that British’s Indian empire was ‘an empire of opinion’ and it was
founded on the disinclination of ‘the natives to reflect upon their own
strength. The reluctance of Indians in general to reflect upon their own
strength was a big factor in the continuing submission of India to Britain in
Johnstone’s time, but the particular failure disappeared long time ago from
India. What remains true, partly because of the circumstance of Indian
politics, is that underprivileged Indians are relect5acnt to rise and demand a
rapid and definitive remove of their extraordinarily deprivation. The
complaints of the ‘comparatively privileged but not more privileges, which constitutes
the category of the so-called ‘ordinary people; are powerfully aired, and
perspectives of this easily mobilize group get the lion’s share of the championing
by major political parties. This is in sharp contrast with the relative lack of
attention paid to the massive - long standing - deprivations of the underdogs
of Indian society.
[Corruption and
caste system issues are covered in the book; however, since it is well known
facts, I did not add them in my review]
