Thursday 21 August 2014

Reading Dreze and Sen 2: India's problems are not because of its democratic character, but rather due to a lack of it.

Given that China has done much better than India in using its economic growth for the advancement of public services and social infrastructure (which means the provision of basic social services such as schooling, healthcare, safe water, drainage, housing etc), some people in India are often tempted to think that this is because China is authoritarian and India a democracy. The conclusion that these persons reach is that it is India’s democracy that is to blame for its lag behind China. But Dreze and Sen argue that this needs to be questioned.

They point out that, in China, policies are decided at the top, with little scope for pressures from below (i.e. from citizens like us). It is a fact that Chinese leaders – although authoritarian - have been strongly committed to eliminating hunger and illiteracy, and this has certainly helped China’s socio-economic advancement. But authoritarian political systems like China always remains fragile because government leaders can arbitrarily change their priorities in a counter-productive direction and citizens can do very little about it.

Dreze and Sen stress that the gravity of this danger is made clear by the following example: from 1959-62, a catastrophic famine occurred in China. The regime failed to understand what was going on, there was no public pressure against its policies and so it continued its policy mistakes for 3 years, resulting in the death of 30 million (I.e. 30,000,000) people. This is highly unlikely in a democracy which allows room for public pressure, and in which the government is forced to be more accountable to citizens.
 
Another example they provide of the fragility of the process of economic and social advancement through an authoritarian system is China’s economic reforms in 1979. These reforms involved a huge retreat from the principle of universal healthcare coverage: the proportion of rural population covered by free or heavily subsidized healthcare crashed to around 10% within a few years. In a democracy, healthcare could not have been withdrawn so easily and swiftly. This withdrawal of universal entitlement to healthcare reduced the progress of longevity in China, and China’s large lead over India in life expectancy dwindled over the following 2 decades (falling from a 14 year lead to just 7 years)[1]

Being a democracy, India has the advantage of having political leaders who are accountable to its citizens (the UPA regime’s rout in the 2014 elections is a good example of the advantage of being a democracy; if India was not a democracy, its citizens would not have been able to effectively show their disfavor regarding UPA’s policies much less bring about its end). But how much a democracy is able to achieve depends largely on what issues are brought into political engagement i.e. what issues are considered important enough by citizens and are translated into ‘demands’ by the public from the government.

Making certain issues important in the public mind is not easy and does take time (it took many years and the Delhi Gang-rape of 2012 to make women’s right to safety a public demand), but once these issues become a ‘normal’ public demand, they are less capable of being ignored by a democratic government. On the other hand, decisions by authoritarian governments are taken by a handful of leaders at the top and - even when benevolent and public-oriented - can be suddenly and arbitrarily withdrawn. 
   
Given India’s multiple problems, some may be tempted to demand that India gives up or reduces its commitment to democracy for which so many have fought and out of which so much good has come to India. But the continuance of India’s problems is not because of democracy, but instead because MORE use has not been made of the opportunities offered by a political democracy and a free society to solve the problems that so many Indians continue to face.


[The purpose of the ‘Reading Dreze and Sen’ series of blogs is to briefly summarise some of the arguments given by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen in their book ‘An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions’. The arguments are of the authors alone and the blogs are merely a recapitulation of them in as simple a way possible (the style is deliberately informal). The aim is to help myself to remember the details of these arguments (writing always helps!) but more importantly to hopefully trigger conversation and provoke contestation regarding the issues raised, even if on small forums like facebook :)]




[1] Chinese authorities eventually reintroduced social health insurance on a large scale from around 2004. 

Saturday 16 August 2014

Reading Dreze and Sen: 1 - India needs to strive for more than economic growth



There has been some slackening of the growth rate of India’s economy very recently (which is partly related to the global slump). But Dreze and Sen point out that even with its diminished growth rate India is still one of the fastest-growing economies of the world. This is something that we have to keep in mind – despite the hue and cry about an ‘economic slowdown’ in India, our growth rate is still not THAT bad. 
         But still, they agree that India should strive for higher, faster growth. This can be a huge source of strength for it as the fruits of economic growth can be used for the advancement of human lives.

Although agreeing that India has achieved a lot since Independence, both economically and socially, Dreze and Sen emphasise that there is scope for A WHOLE LOT MORE. There have been major shortcomings and breakdowns – even though the privileged as well as our media tends to overlook these. The neglect of these problems in public reasoning [say, in debates on news channels or in our general public consciousness] is harmful because in a democracy it is usually through such discussion and understanding that serious problems are addressed. Although we must celebrate India’s economic progress, one must also remember that its societal reach has been very very limited.

One serious issue is that income distribution in India has been getting more unequal in recent years – this is something we share with China. But China has witnessed a rapid rise in real wages from which Chinese working classes have benefitted. In contrast, India has had relative stagnant real wages.   

A second issue is that the public revenue generated by rapid economic growth has not been used to expand social and physical infrastructure in a determined and well-planned way. In this, India is far behind China.

Third, despite its economic growth, India continues to lack essential social services for a huge part of the population. Schooling, heath-care, provision of safe drinking water and drainage are some examples of crucial social services. 

Another problem is that while India has overtaken other countries in terms of its real income, it has been overtaken in terms of social indicators by many of these countries - even by some of its poorer neighbours! 
For example, India has caught up with China in terms of GDP growth but it lags far behind China in terms of longevity (how long people live), literacy, child nourishment and maternal mortality. In South Asia itself, a much poorer Bangladesh has overtaken it in terms of social indicators (such as life expectancy, immunization of children, infant mortality, child nourishment and girls’ schooling). Even Nepal is catching up with India (inspite of its GDP being just 1/3rd of India’s)! 20 years ago, India used to have the 2nd best social indicators among 6 South Asian Countries (i.e. among India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan) – now.. it’s the 2nd worst (ahead only of ‘problem-ridden Pakistan’)!  

So, while India has been climbing up the ladder of per capita income (average income of a person per year has been increasing), it has been slipping in terms of social indicators.

Economic growth generates income. But in India, the income generated by growth has been unequally shared (to put it simply, the rich get more than the poor). Moreover, the resources created have not been used to address the social deprivation of the poor and marginalized.

There is much work to be done – India has to make use of the fruits of economic growth a) to enhance the living conditions of the people and b) to reduce the massive inequalities in India’s economy and society.

Apart from that, India needs to address its far-reaching failure in governance and organization. One instance of this is the mismanagement of the power sector – most of us have suffered from India’s persistent power failures and some of us may know that 1/3rd of India’s population has no electricity at all! This is a massive failure (only 1% of China’s population suffers from this problem). But the sad state of the power sector is only part of the serious failure to provide good physical infrastructure. Similar deficiencies can be seen in water supply, drainage, garbage disposal, public transport, and so on.

So, Dreze and Sen conclude that while maintaining a consistently high growth rate is surely important, India needs to strive for something larger than that - It needs to utilise the fruits of its growth to address the disparities and deficiencies mentioned above.     



[The purpose of the ‘Reading Dreze and Sen’ series of blogs is to briefly summarise some of the arguments given by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen in their book ‘An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions’. The arguments are of the authors alone and the blogs are merely a recapitulation of them in as simple a way possible (the style is deliberately informal). The aim is to help myself to remember the details of these arguments (writing always helps!) but more importantly to hopefully trigger conversation and provoke contestation regarding the issues raised, even if on small forums like facebook :)]