Corrective to Dominant Discourse them and lobby the government more

effectively. Social welfare policies for

the masses of poor are a secondary
on Growth and Development matter and influenced by the prevailing
ideology held by state managers, which
changes and adapts depending on the
ACHIN VANAIK
"social balance of forces" internally and
externally in a given conjuncture. "India
was never not pro-rich", says Chibber
highest possible growth rate is (p 185). He reminds us that even in
At highest seen a time
seen asasthepossible
key totheeliminating
when key establishing growth to eliminating rate the is Growth, Inequality and Social Development
the Nehruvian years of statism or state
poverty and bringing about rapid and in India: Is Inclusive Growth Possible? edited by capitalism (decked up as socialism), the
cumulative improvements in social R Naga raj (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan and Geneva: public sector was always kept in bounds
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development),
development, this book edited by R Na- acceptable to business houses with "every
2012; pp 238.
garaj, with chapter contributions by oth- major body set up to design policy and
er scholars, stands out as an important new state institutions... dominated by
corrective to this dominant and mislead- As is well known, Indian expenditure on business leaders" (p 174).
ing discourse. It is not often that edited education and health as a percentage of In the organised sector, the tripartite
books have an overall coherence. This one gdp is way down on the global rankings. system of industrial relations, with gov-
does, even as there is a certain division What is more, the quantitative emphasis ernment arbitration of disputes, worked
of labour in this collective effort. Together, on the growth outcomes from state funds against collective bargaining and meant
the authors offer a historical overview of serves to divert attention from the quanti- inordinate delays in arriving at settle-
why India, despite having had positive tative and qualitative aspects of the neo- ments. This favoured employers with
annual growth rates over the last 65 liberal growth processes themselves, greater capacities to wait out conflicts
years, has performed so badly compara- whether rising inequalities of all kinds or with labour. Limited land reforms created

tively and absolutely when it comes to growing privatisation of welfare provision. a new layer of rich peasants. Agrarian
social development, as measured by policy sought to raise supply rather than
standard indicators of health, education, Empirically Rich wage demands for basic consumption
inequalities, steady wages and other The first five chapters are empirically rich goods. In the 1970s, the Indira Gandhi
forms of social security and protection. descriptive-analytical pieces about the years saw some positive anti-poverty
Over the course of three policy regimes Indian situation, the thrust and impact schemes like the public distribution
(whose rough periodisation is common of the three policy regimes and what system (pds) and Integrated Rural Deve-
to all the contributors) - 1950-65, 1966-80, should be done to reduce inequalities and lopment Programme (irdp), and bank
1980 onwards - there has been some generate social development. The last nationalisations with credit expansion
variation in the rate at which poverty two chapters by Vivek Chibber and Atul to smaller capitals. The reasons could be
declined. At the same time, the perform- Kohli are theoretical-analytical pieces traced to the break-up of the Congress
ance of different states varies considera- seeking to explain more fundamental and growing inter-elite competition,
bly across geographies. But these varia- reasons for the Indian state's failure. In a rather than great popular pressure. But
tions tend to rebut rather than confirm reversal of the book's layout, the review Indira Gandhi's last years, and the Rajiv
the neo-liberal claim that high growth starts with the last two chapters. Gandhi era, witnessed the beginnings
rates in gross domestic product (gdp) Chibber's central argument is lucid of the liberalisation programme. The
are the most vital element for bringing and persuasive. Operating in a capitalist groundwork for the 1991 reforms were
about rapid poverty decline and general setting, the Indian state must prioritise laid down by the rise of new business
social development. The latest version of the interests and profitable investment houses more keen on liberalisation,
this mantra is not so much "trickle-down of private asset owners (rural and urban), largely coalescing around the Confeder-
theory", as the view that high growth rates thereby enabling the capitalist economy ation of Indian Industry (en) to counter
greatly enhance state coffers, thereby to continuously grow and provide the Federation of Indian Chambers of Com-
enabling greater social welfare spending. steady flow of taxes for the state to merce and Industry (ficci), which was
Even though social sector spending by financially reproduce itself and maintain controlled by the older established big
the centre and state governments more or expand its functions. There is and has business houses.

than doubled from Rs 1,41,740 crore in to be a structural bias reflected in state Kohli's chapter complements Chibber's.
2002-03 to Rs 2,94,312 crore in 2007-08, policies. Moreover, these dominant class- Yes, the social character of the Indian
this figure was lower than either Brazil, es are also relatively stronger and more state is the main reason for the policy
Russia or China or other bric members. organised than other social layers below priorities set or ignored by it. But Indian

Economic & Political weekly E3SS3 December 29, 2012 vol xlvii no 52 ^5

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democracy has at times and in places and extended piping is deeply mislead- These authors refer to important work
provided a partial counterweight. Kohli such as the Dreze-Sen distinction between
ing because it ignores the issue of water
suggests that where quality. Nearly 20% of existing toilets
"growth-led" and "support-led" human
are non-functioning and practices of development. Applied to examine cross-
effective governmental power rests on a
broad political base. ..rulers have minimised waste disposal and management in socountry and intra-country comparisons,
the hold of upper classes on the state, suc- many villages are absent or abysmal. the latter has shown considerable suc-
cessfully organised the middle and lower As Gita Sen and D Rajasekhar state in
cesses in inclusivity when there is low
strata into an effective power bloc and then their contribution on "Social Protection growth, because of equitable distribution
used this power to channel resources to the
Policies, Experiences and Challenges", of assets and incomes (and therefore of
poor (p 211).
today over 80% of all healthcare is pro-power) and more effective welfare pro-
So thanks to the anti-brahmin move- vided privately, 75% of hospital beds and visioning by governments. The claim that
70% of hospitals are urban-based, but a high GDP growth rate (as distinct from
ments, southern state governments have
40% of all hospitalised treatment is in agricultural growth) is the single most
had a broader base and have performed
better at poverty alleviation. The other
public hospitals since the poorest strata important input into poverty reduction
key factor in preventing better welfaredepend on this. Leaving aside matters of and social development, has simply
how well-stocked the Primary Health no merit. Faster growing states like
service delivery, according to Kohli, is
that the lower bureaucracy is much lessCentres (phcs) are in terms of medicines Maharashtra and Gujarat do not fare
professional than the upper echelonsand personnel, their numbers are far better in social development than slower
and all too often subordinated to local
from adequate. In Kerala, there is one growing ones like Kerala, West Bengal,
power elites. The panchayati raj institu-PHC for two villages, in Tamil Nadu (tn) tn, or Andhra Pradesh (ap).
tions (pris), with exceptions, have not
one for 14 villages, in Madhya Pradesh The chapter by M H Suryanarayana
performed well. But since state govern-(mp) one for 48, in Odisha, one for 73 on "Economic Development and Inequa-
and Jharkhand one for 99 villages. Yetlities" confirms through a wealth of data
ments are closer and more receptive to
the dominant trend today is for further analysis that in the post-liberalisation
pressures from below than a centre that
is in hock to corporate interests, theprivatisation in public health provision- period, inequalities of all kinds have
growing régionalisation of the Indian ing. Government plans for a universal grown. In fact, the poorest deciles of the
polity may improve matters. health insurance scheme initiated in 2004 population have seen a decline in their
ignore the need to greatly improve the proportional consumption share while
Poverty Trends public health system. the top decile in rural and urban India
Nagaraj, in his two chapters, points out Both Nagaraj, and Shanker and Shah have seen a rise in their proportionate
highlight educational inequality as well share of consumption. Family subdivi-
that though poverty levels have declined,
as the dismal state, quality-wise, ofsion of plots in rural India has promoted
nutrition levels remain poor, especially
for women and children; per capita elementary schooling, which is over- more concentration and greater land-
intakes have not improved. Germane to whelmingly the responsibility of govern-lessness. Operational landholdings rose
this finding, though not mentioned in ments, municipalities and local authori-from 51 million in 1960-61 to 101 million
the book, is that everywhere in the world,
ties. Again, is it caste elitism that best ex- in 2002-03, while the average area
a rise in per capita incomes is associatedplains this historic disregard? Two-thirds operated fell from 2.63 hectare to 1.06
of out-of-school children are in Uttar
with a rise in per capita calorie intakes. hectare. Unsurprisingly, Suryanarayana
The Indian anomaly has been argued
Pradesh (up), Bihar, mp and West Bengal;calls for governmental support to small
22% of scheduled tribes and scheduled
away by neo-liberal devotees as reflect- entrepreneurs and physical regulation
ing better protein-based diets andcastes, and 20% of Muslim children do to curb concentration of assets.
health. In fact, Nagaraj is clearly right to
not attend. The growing reliance on para-
teachers means giving up on quality in- Policy on Social Evolution
explain these trends by reference to the
struction, while other problems of over- One of the more interesting parallels
terrible state of public health with poor
sanitation and lack of access to decent crowding, single teacher schools, lack of drawn by Sen and Rajasekhar is between
drinking water. space, substandard facilities are well- Latin America and India vis-à-vis their
known to subsist. The suggestion to con- policy evolution on social protection
After the mid-2oth century discovery
centrate reform not on districts, but on through four phases. In Latin America, the
of antibiotics, India went in for an elitist
the 1,000 (out of the total 3,000) blocks first phase focused on organised workers
curative approach, not the preventive
in the country is well taken but surpris- and import substitution. The second in
and hygiene route partly, as V Shanker
and M Shah point out in their chapter
ingly there is no reference to what other the 1970s saw anti-poverty schemes. The
on "Rethinking Reform", because of studies have shown - that land reform third in the 1980s and 1990s saw neo-
upper caste contempt for those below. and educational reform go hand-in-handliberal cost-cutting and targeting. In the
Shankar and Shah point out that because the key lies in breaking existingcurrent fourth phase, there is the emer-
government data on expanding water caste and power relations in the poorestgence in certain countries of strong rights-
availability via handpump installations
parts of rural India. based and universal solidarity approaches

26 DECEMBER 29, 2012 VOL XLVII NO 52 033 Economic & Political WEEKLY

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 to welfare provision. In India, in the rather than as a complement to wider mistake abetted by the discourse of a
2000S, alongside the neo-liberal thrust, public welfare provision. At the very least, "second democratic upsurge" and the
there emerged partial and universal full social protection of all kinds should more general liberal discourse that des-
rights-based approaches - right to infor- be extended to all families dependent on pite criticisms, essentially celebrates the
mation (rti), right to education (rte), the 92% of the workforce in the unorga- "great virtues" of Indian democracy. In
food security legislation and the Mahat- nised sector. Adopting cash transfers fact, the centre of gravity of the polity
ma Gandhi National Rural Employment and recusing itself further from public and society has over the last two dec-
Guarantee Act (mgnrega). provision is the likely direction the Indian ades and more, shifted firmly to the
The book does not really take up these state is going to take no matter who its right, making this Indian state more au-
recent developments or discuss where political overseers will be after the next thoritarian and less substantive in its
they might be heading. But there is the general elections - this reality is not democratic character. Not acknowledg-
recognition that the Latin American really registered in this study. ing this reality tends to promote the
experience of using conditional cash Finally, a few of the chapters seem to belief that it is still possible to establish a
transfers if applied in India will not have suggest that one saving grace that can more humane, social democratic version
as positive an impact. The per capita promote social development in the future of Indian capitalism. Is it perhaps time
income is much lower in India and its is the "deepening" of Indian democracy. to think more radically?
proportion of the poor is much larger. This is to mistake the durability of a pro-
Some rights-based schemes are meant to ceduralist system of liberal democracyAchin Vanaik ( achin.vanaik@gmail.com ) was
be targeted, not universal. Cash transfers (which will have some substantive pay- formerly with the department of political
are more likely to be used as a substitute offs) for its deepening. This is a categoryscience, Delhi University.

most powerful country in the world eco-

Redefining India's Independent nomically and militarily, for India's
needs and aspirations in economic and
Foreign Policy strategic terms. He argues that in spite of
American alliance with Pakistan during
the cold war years and the problems it
PRITHVI RAJ MUDIAM
created for India, Indo-us relations
were not all negative. He acknowledges
the generous aid that India received
India's Foreign Policy: Coping with the
turned academic Muchkund Dubey Changing World by Muchkund Dubey (Delhi: Pearson), from the us during this period includ-
This turned is a welcome
is a welcomebookandacademic
significantbycon-
and a Muchkund career significant diplomat- Dubey con- 2012; pp 306, Rs 699. ing badly needed food aid under PL-480
tribution to the existing literature on and the positive role that the us played
India's foreign policy. The book contains attributes India's growing stature to itsin ensuring considerable help to India
reworked papers published by Dubey higher growth rates and its recently ac- under International Development As-
over the last two decades on issues quired status as a nuclear weapons state. sistance. Though there is a substantive
While emphasising the necessity of Indiaoverlap of interests between India and
related to India's foreign policy forays
and concerns. The absence of an over- maintaining a minimum military pre- the us in the areas of economy, terrorism
arching framework and organic coher-paredness both in conventional and and the Indian Ocean in the post-cold war
ence in the book is more than compen- nuclear terms for its physical survival, period, Dubey warns against excessive
he pays adequate attention to non-con- dependence on the us in solving prob-
sated by the objectivity, incisive analysis
and rare insight that Dubey brings toventional dimensions of security like lems in India's neighbourhood. Taking
bear on his work. food, energy and environment. He alsoPakistan-sponsored terrorism as an ex-
On the underlying principles of India'sfocuses on issues of governance likeample, the author says that there limits
foreign policy, the author emphasises themeeting the basic needs of the people, to what the us can do and is willing
continued relevance of non-alignmentremoval of poverty and prevention of to do to help India. It should first ensure
marginalisation of large sections of thethat it does all it can in its own territory
which he defines as India exercising its
"independent judgment" in promotingpopulation which he regards as potential to improve intelligence, border manage-
India's own national interests and those threats, unless handled with care and ment, governance and prevent the aliena-
of the international order in its own way. purpose. He is quite persuasive in his tion of its minorities and marginalised
The Non-Aligned Movement (nam), with argument that the foreign policy of a groups before thinking of acting beyond
India as one of its leading lights, should country should meet its internal needs,its borders. Dubey's assessment of Indo-
spearhead the movement for interna-developmental as well as security. us relations is nuanced, mature and
tional peace, disarmament, multilateral- Dubey is unapologetic about the impor- refreshingly free from ideological and
ism and a just world order. He franklytance of the United States (us), still therhetorical overtones.

Economic & Political weekly lauyj December 29, 2012 vol xlvii no 52 27

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