Mera Bharat Mahaan

Here is an article, which featured in Deccan Chronicle, a south-Indian English daily on Jan'05, 2010. This article vehemently brings out the fact that how poor people have been excluded from the process of development despite so much rhetoric in recent past about State's social security programmes. Worth having a quick glance at it. ( Thanks to Neeraj Biyani for forwading this)

Mera Bharat Mahaan

By By Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Jan 05 2010

Economists have debated and continue to debate about how unequal India is. There is anecdotal evidence that indicates that even if the poor are not becoming poorer, the gap between the rich and the poor has continued to grow even as the economy grows by eight to nine per cent each year and politicians mouth empty slogans about the need for “inclusive” growth. The fact is that the government’s actions tend to favour the affluent and often come down hard on the underprivileged.

The venue was the ballroom of a five-star hotel in Delhi where a television channel was giving awards celebrating excellence in human and social development in Indian states.

Towards the conclusion of the function and a little before the whisky started flowing, one of the judges of the competition stood up to make a brief intervention. He happened to be a member of the Rajya Sabha and a former governor of Reserve Bank of India, Bimal Jalan. He stated that the total value of the assets of the country’s top five billionaires (that is, in US dollar terms) equalled those of the bottom 300 million people. He was no party-pooper that evening for scarcely an eyebrow was raised. Before long, it was back to the booze.

The upper classes in the country and, increasingly, large sections of the middle classes as well, have become apathetic to rising inequality.

“The poor are poor because they are lazy and inefficient… the poor must become resigned to their fates because human beings are not born equal, just as five fingers in a hand are not the same” — such statements are made with unerring regularity as well-off, inured individuals seek to clear their conscience by rolling down the windows of their air-conditioned cars to drop a few coins in the hands of begging children.

Yes, it’s become a cliché but the fact needs repeating: India produces one-third of the world’s computer software engineers and one-fourth of the planet’s poor, under-nourished and illiterate. In a recent article entitled How unequal a country is India? economist Pranab Bardhan argues that inequality in India is not merely higher than in China but possibly “in the Latin American range” as official data in this country focuses on distribution of consumption expenditure and not on income, which under-estimates inequality as the rich tend to save more than the poor (Business Standard, September 5, 2009).

Dr Bardhan argues that if one considers factors such as inequality in the distribution of land and capital, access to education, healthcare and employment opportunities and mobility across generations and social groups, there is substantial evidence to indicate that Indian society is becoming more polarised along class lines.

He refutes Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar’s contention about the poor that if they cared about inequality, they should have celebrated the erosion in the wealth of the rich on account of the worldwide recession. Dr Bardhan writes that the “reduction in the net worth of India’s corporate oligarchy has not at all reduced its corrupt grip in the (country’s) political life, or lowered the power of local landlords or the political elite that capture local governance and misappropriate funds and services meant for the poor”.

When, in May 2006, the report of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector headed by Arjun Sengupta claimed that 78 per cent of those who work in the unorganised sector in India live on Rs 20 a day or less, there was a huge hue and cry from economists who questioned the methodology and authenticity of the data that was used to arrive at such a conclusion. In December 2009, an expert group headed by the former head of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, Suresh Tendulkar, estimated that roughly a quarter of the country’s urban population live on Rs 19 a day while close to 42 per cent of the rural population consume goods and services roughly worth Rs 15 a day.

One can quibble for months about which estimate made by which particular group of economists is more accurate than the other. But the fact is that despite a lot of hot air about the need to ensure growth with equity, India’s track record in this regard has been pretty poor. This is regardless the overall rate of the economy picking up significantly in recent years. Yet, traditionally, unequal countries like Mexico, Brazil and Chile have been far more successful than India has been in reducing poverty and inequality, often by more than a fifth, through conditional cash transfer schemes — one important condition being that girl-children remain in school.

An example of how the Indian government often turns a blind eye towards recovering dues from the rich became known when, in response to a query raised under the Right to Information Act, the New Delhi Municipal Committee (NDMC) disclosed a list of arrears that were due to it, the country’s most affluent civic body, accounting for over half its annual budget of Rs 1,656 crores.

Here’s a small sample from the list on the NDMC’s website: ITC Maurya Hotel (Rs 64 crores), Taj Palace Hotel (Rs 43 crores), the public sector State Trading Corporation (Rs 43 crores), The Oberoi Hotel (Rs 37 crores), the government owned Ashok Hotel (Rs 31 crores) and Samrat Hotel (Rs 20 crores).

Even the owners of the building on Tansen Marg, that houses the offices of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, an association of some of India’s most wealthy industrialists, owes the NDMC over Rs 1 crore. Not surprisingly, these claims of arrears are embroiled in a welter of complex legal cases, suits, petitions and appeals in and out of courts.

This is India, for you. A steaming cup of tea in one of the hotels mentioned could cost you more than what an unskilled labourer will earn as his or her new daily minimum wage for eight hours of work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act — said to the world’s largest social security programme — that is, a princely sum of a hundred rupees.

Mera Bharat mahaan. Happy new year!