What's Going on in India?

Perspectives Book What’s going on in India? The glory. After 40 years of economic and indiscriminately dispense Security Act was passed by India’s growth that barely exceeded the antibiotics, injections, and lower house, the Lok Sabha, last population growth, India turned intravenous drips that their clients month—and helped pass the Right to into a growth miracle, pulling demand. Public doctors are qualifi ed, Information Act. This last Act, Drèze hundreds of millions of people out but most spend little time with and Sen argue, is an important tool of destitution. At Independence in their patients and rarely undertake for limiting corruption and making 1947, Indians were perhaps the most even basic medical tests. The Public government serve its people, not malnourished large population in Distribution Scheme (PDS), which prey on them, as is too often the case human history. Life expectancy at provides heavily subsidised food to today. Drèze and Sen believe that birth was close to 30 years. Today, the poor, is rife with corruption, its better health care and education and each generation is taller than the food is often adulterated, and only higher incomes can help transform previous one, gross medical signs a little more than a half of what is India’s democracy through reasoned An Uncertain Glory: India and of malnutrition are rare, more than destined for the poor reaches them; public debate, to which their book its Contradictions Jean Drèze, Amartya Sen. 95% of Indians say that they get the rest is lost through poor storage is an important contribution. In this Penguin, 2013. Pp 448. £20·00. “enough food every day”, and the or sold off by corrupt offi cials. Critics new world, of whose coming they see ISBN 9781846147616 prevalence of extreme stunting and many hopeful signs, collective action wasting is falling. Child and infant “Drèze and Sen believe that will enhance and support the role mortality rates are declining, and are better health care and of the private market in generating lower in India today than in England education and higher incomes wealth and wellbeing. in 1945. Girls are going to school en can help transform India’s Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind masse, even in places where their Panagariya’s paean to economic democracy through reasoned mothers are illiterate. That a few, growth, Why Growth Matters: How smallish, Asian tigers could achieve public debate, to which their Economic Growth in India Reduced such miracles is one thing. That India book is an important Poverty and the Lessons for other (and China) could do so for more contribution.” Developing Countries, takes a diff erent than 2 billion people is surely one tack. (In India, the book is titled, after of the remarkable and benevolent levy similar charges against the more Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech on the eve transitions of all time. recent employment scheme that of Independence, India’s Tryst with Why Growth Matters: How So why the uncertainty? The World guarantees 100 days of work to each Destiny, and aggressively subtitled Economic Growth in India Bank classes India as a middle-income rural household at a government Debunking Myths that Undermine Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for other Developing country, yet a third of the population wage. All this, like the glory, is Progress and Addressing New Countries lives below the destitution poverty essentially common ground. Challenges, on which more below.) Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind line. Indians comprise a third of all of In An Uncertain Glory: India and Here, growth is the central player, Panagariya. PublicAff airs, 2013. and the acceleration in growth—and Pp 304. US$28·99. the world’s poor. According to WHO’s its Contradictions, Jean Drèze and ISBN 9781610392716 international growth standards, a Amartya Sen argue that the Indian a consequent acceleration in the rate half of India’s children are severely Government can do much better, of poverty reduction—is attributed malnourished, more than in most of and indeed is already doing better. to the economic reforms of the early sub-Saharan Africa, despite Africa’s They believe that the PDS, for the 1990s, the (partial) dismantling of much lower incomes and higher first time in history, is making a the “licence Raj”, the web of red- mortality rates. The rate at which serious dent in poverty, that the tape and bureaucratic regulation poverty is falling is much lower than employment guarantee scheme, that stifled growth while fostering would be warranted by India’s growth despite its diffi culties, is an important rent-seeking and corruption. They rate if growth were equally spread. source of employment and of higher recommend dismantling what Many government schools and clinics agricultural wages. Drèze, when he remains, especially long-standing are disfi gured by worker absenteeism, is not writing, is a successful activist restrictions on hiring and firing for which the culprits usually face no who played an important part in of workers that, they argue, are consequence. Private health care the creation of the employment responsible for the failure of India to fills in, but private practitioners guarantee scheme. He is currently match China’s extraordinary success are not regulated, are often working to reform the public in labour-intensive manufacturing. entirely unqualified, and routinely distribution system—a National Food Bhagwati and Panagariya are far www.thelancet.com Vol 382 September 21, 2013 1015 Perspectives whereas Bhagwati and Panagariya believe that growth should come first, with health and education as something of a luxury that should come once the country can aff ord it. Neither book adequately recognises a major statistical puzzle: a large share of Indian growth does not appear to accrue to anyone. The poor do not fully share in India’s growth, which can be partly explained by rising inequality (the extent of which is controversial), but the average household also does not do as well as does the country, which should Associated Press be impossible. My own take is that Indian school children receive a free meal at a government school on the outskirts of Jammu, India, the data on households miss some on Aug 22, 2013 of what people have, overstating poverty, and understating its rate of from laissez faire zealots. They often the result of a poorly chosen diet—too decline. But India’s national accounts advocate the need for government little milk and fruit—and they argue are weak, and growth rates are regulation, and agree that Indian that government attempts to address probably not as high as is claimed. poverty requires government action. malnutrition “might push them No one argues that the Indian But they are deeply sceptical of the towards obesity”, not to mention Government deliberately manipulates government’s ability to deliver food, exacerbating corruption. They also its statistics, but Indian politicians education, or health care, and argue suggest that child malnutrition in and their administrators are in no for a strictly targeted system of cash India, if it is a problem at all, is not a hurry to mount a close enquiry into transfers and vouchers instead. To serious one. the miracle that they see as their them, the corruption and failings of The claim that India’s economic greatest achievement. the PDS and employment guarantee reforms were the key to poverty As its Indian title forewarns, the fi rst scheme are irremediable. reduction is not seriously developed half of Bhagwati and Panagariya‘s These are familiar (and reasoned) in Why Growth Matters, and Bhagwati book sets out to debunk a series of positions, variants of which have and Panagariya seem to have their so-called myths. This is all rather been around for a long time. I would own poverty estimates (referred to in odd: it is hard to believe that some like to believe that Bhagwati and the list of references as “in progress” of these “myths” were ever believed Panagariya are wrong, and Drèze although I can fi nd no reference to by anyone. Eventually, it becomes and Sen right. But there is no doubt it on the web). The Indian poverty clear that these myths are held only that there is a long and diffi cult road data are controversial and not by a straw man version of Amartya ahead to achieving more effective easily interpreted and the literature Sen, who seems to be the true government and better democracy contains claims that range from no target—something that has become in India. acceleration in poverty reduction to clearer still in the media (particularly Yet Bhagwati and Panagariya go too there being little poverty left. Beyond the Indian press) in the fallout over far. In my view, they tread much too that, economists know very little the two books. For readers of Why close to the “poverty denialism” strain about the determinants of growth, Growth Matters, this subtext is not in the Indian debate. They throw out and although no one mourns the only unnecessary for the argument, WHO’s international growth standards end of the licence Raj, the story of it is thoroughly unpleasant. Such for children, and dismiss as “nonsense” India’s growth is as clouded as the personal animosity—which appears the possibility that children in Kerala story of its poverty reduction. One big to be unreciprocated by Sen, and could be more malnourished than diff erence between the two books is certainly makes no appearance in An children in Senegal. They claim— that Drèze and Sen believe that health Uncertain Glory—does much to win without direct evidence or argument— and education are preconditions the argument for the other side. that Indians are genetically shorter. for economic growth—and the Bhagwati and Panagariya suggest that international historical evidence Angus Deaton what malnutrition exists in India is surely supports that position— [email protected] 1016 www.thelancet.com Vol 382 September 21, 2013.

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