In 1984 I was doing my A levels (yes I am that old), driving my first car and going out with my first boyfriend. On the other side of the world, however, Ethiopia was in the midst of famine – causing an estimated one million deaths and many more made destitute. I still remember the shocking images of the BBC reports from Michael Buerk at such a formative time of my life. Like so many then, it sparked off many questions for me: about inequality in the world, injustice, why people were starving when other countries had so much food and what could anyone do about it? Travelling to India for the first time in 1985, you couldn’t help but be moved and concerned by the extreme inequality and poverty that confronted you in the towns and villages: children, women, disabled people living and begging on the street.In 2011, I went back to India on a brief visit to Delhi with Susen. It had been 16 years since my last visit and 26 years since my first visit as a teenager. In that time, India had liberalised its economy and experienced rapid growth, becoming one of the 4 up and coming BRIC countries, set to rival and supercede the old US and European powers. Indian graduates from the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) were sought after all over the world, and Bangalore had become India’s Silicon Valley. India now has more US $ billionaires than the UK and is itself a donor of development aid to Africa. India could no longer be seen as a poor country, with an expanding middle class, availability of consumer goods and new shiny shopping malls.
And yet the inequality and poverty are still endemic and infrastructure woefully lagging behind rivals, notably China. I took the two pictures below in Delhi during our recent trip, starkly illustrating the rich / poor, private / public divide. Inside the shopping mall, you could be anywhere in Europe – air conditioning, coffee shops etc. But step outside and you are confronted by unfinished pavements and child beggars. Why is this? Why hasn’t India’s economic growth translated into improved infrastructure for all and less inequality? It really is a huge conundrum.
These are questions that Nobel prize winner, Indian philosopher and economist Amartya Sen (with Jean Drèze) has tried to address in his new book ‘An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions’. Sen was speaking at the London School of Economics on 26 June, to promote his new book and I was lucky enough to be allocated a ticket to a very oversubscribed talk.
Amartya Sen will need no introduction to many. Originally from a Bengali Hindu background in Shantiniketan, West Bengal, he is currently Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is best known for his work on welfare economics and the causes of famine. To my mind, he seems to have a perfect set up: married to his third wife, Emma Rothschild, he divides his time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Shantiniketan (home of Tagore’s university). His co-author, Jean Drèze, is also an impressive figure. Drèze is a development economist of Belgium origin, living in India since 1979. He became an Indian citizen in 2002 and has an admirable commitment to social justice and voluntary simplicity in his lifestyle.
Sen is not so young anymore and I found his public speaking style a little difficult to follow. He seems to wander off into anecdotes that make you wonder where he is going and what his point is, before coming back and making his point with perfect focus and clarity of mind you might have been in danger of missing.
Sen started with Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’ in 1776. At that time, India was one of the richest parts of the world (mainly N. India and Bengal) and Smith postulated that this was because of trade. Under the British Empire, however, India’s growth rate was extremely low – only around 0.1% in the first half of the 20th century (nowhere near even the ‘Hindu rate of growth’ - around 3.5% / year). By the 1980s, however, the growth rate was 5%, rising to 8% / year after the economic reforms of the early 1990s. India was the 2nd fastest growing economy for many years at this time. Its income in 2011 was 5 times that of 1947 (adjusted for inflation and per capita). Life expectancy had risen from 32 years in 1947 to 66 years currently. This was coupled with a democratic system and a human rights commission with legal standing. By any measure of development: well being, freedom and justice and economic growth, India was doing well.
But in recent years, this has not been sustained. Whilst in 1990, India came 2nd (just below Sri Lanka) in South Asia on standard indicators such as quality of life and living standards, today it is the 2nd lowest (just above Pakistan) and way behind Bangladesh. China’s life expectancy is ahead of India, at 73 years. Even in Bangladesh, life expectancy has overtaken India’s – from 62 in 1990 to 69 currently.
Sen and Drèze argue that investment in human capital – through education and public healthcare – is the foundation to economic growth and a market economy. He takes the example of Japan, whose rapid post Second World War growth started with a huge emphasis on education. Similar development has occurred in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and to some extent in Hong Kong and Thailand.
In contrast, India’s first 5 year plan post-independence did not have such a focus on education, or only very basic education. Sen calls the education system in India today, ‘a mess’. Yes, there are a few elite schools which rival the best in the world, but for the majority of the population, the state school system is failing. He reports that more than 50% of school children, after 4 years of schooling cannot divide 20 by 5. One survey of state schools in 7 of the northern states found no teaching activity in half of them.
Similarly, with the provision of public healthcare. China (after a brief experiment with a US – style health care system which saw coverage plummet) now has healthcare cover for 96% of the population. While China spends around 2.7% of GDP on healthcare, India spends only 1.2% on public healthcare provision. (Both of these figures, however, are low compared to a global average of 6.5% GDP and 8% in the UK for public healthcare). The immunisation rate in India is 72%, compared to 99% in China and 96% in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh’s success in development, Sen comments, is due, in large part, to the participation of women. Women were prominent as leaders in the independence movement and today it is the only country in the world where the number of girls in school outnumbers boys. A high proportion of workers in both healthcare and education are women leading to more gender equity. Girls in India are too often seen only as a burden, largely due to the continuation of the dowry system, leading to a strong preference for boys and millions of sex selective abortions.
Of course, India is a big country and there is variation across the individual states. Kerala has always stood out as having better education and healthcare provision and today is one of the richer states, along with Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh. India can almost be divided into 2 halves – the richer Eastern / Southern half and poorer Northern and Western half. But, even according to the Government’s own statistics, nearly half of all children in India are chronically malnourished. From 2005-2010 India ranked second to last among 129 countries on underweight children, below Ethiopia, Niger, Nepal and Bangladesh. Remember this is a country with more billionaires than the UK.
Sen and Drèze are clear about the foundations for economic and social development: first public investment in education and healthcare with gender equality. From this a strong market economy can grow with state and market complementing one another. They are, however, gloomy about prospects for this happening in India because of deeply entrenched inequality. The ruling elite are defined and set apart by a combination of caste, education, gender and income. India’s government and bureaucrats, drawn mostly from privileged backgrounds seem to have little interest in improving the situation for everyone else including lower castes and classes. Sen goes as far as calling the state ‘negligent’ in failing to provide the necessary infrastructure of education, healthcare and sanitation. He can criticise as, being an Indian citizen, he cannot be accused of criticising from solely a Western standpoint.
Yesterday saw India passing a new Food Security Law which aims to provide 5kg of subsidised food grain per person per month to around 2/3 of the population – in a populist measure to try to address the huge hunger and malnutrition problem. But this seems more aimed at symptoms, rather than doing much to tackle to real underlying issues. It may lead to even more food rotting and wasted unless the storage and supply network is improved. It also does nothing to address state failure, as Sen and Drèze argue, to provide the necessary education, healthcare and infrastructure to facilitate further market growth and address the huge inequality.
Susen comments that after his father left India for the last time in 1966, he wrote a letter that was published in The Statesman, a Calcutta newspaper. In the letter he said that India would not develop until it had clean water and sewerage, near universal basic healthcare (he was an NHS doctor), and fresh milk to the front door, all elements that the UK had by that time. Forty five plus years later it seems nothing has changed in India. Educated people like Susen’s father continue to emigrate, never to return, and this will continue.
Now it seems India’s progress has slowed considerably, and other developing countries such as Brazil, South Africa, and Nigeria may overtake it. The elites in India do not acknowledge the levels of inequality, nor that it is a structural barrier to further and sustainable long term growth.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2013/06/20130626t1830vOT.aspx
No comments:
Post a Comment