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June 2009 Edition

‘There can be no substitute for governance, activist State’

THE CAGED PHOENIX
CAN INDIA FLY?

Dipankar Gupta
Rs 550
Penguin Viking

THE euphoria over India's high growth rate over the past decade has slowly died down. Apart from the global recession, it is our poverty figures and human development indicators which have led to a sense of disquiet. High growth has not pulled people out of poverty and we continue to languish in backwardness.

Dipankar Gupta, professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in his book, The Caged Phoenix, explains why the India growth story has not translated into development for all. Combining fieldwork with academic rigour, he takes apart various reasons trotted out for India's inability to provide opportunity and development to the grassroots.

Your book says culture is not a reason for India's backwardness. Surely culture has some influence?

By explaining away India's poverty and economic backwardness on a cultural basis we ignore the vital shortcomings of our state in addressing the delivery of public goods - education, health, housing, energy and so on. All too often the poor are blamed for their misery. It is said they either produce too many children, or are caste ridden, or are superstitious, or cannot look beyond the village.

None of these features can stand the test of rigorous analysis. The poor in India travel long distances looking for jobs, any job; they live and work with people of different castes; they may be superstitious but they know how to keep these beliefs in their place so as not to interfere with their economic activity; their family size is directly related to their lifestyle and not to their mindset and they are not besotted by the village. Five billion railway tickets are sold every year. This could not be possible if the Indian villager was resolutely bound to the countryside.

Your book points out how the Indian village is imploding. Is the village facing extinction?

The rural economy is increasingly becoming non-agricultural. Today nearly half of rural net domestic income comes from activities other than agriculture. In a way one might say that apart from density of population, Indian villages may not qualify as rural any more. But they are still there as empirical realities though their.rural essence, which is agriculture, is being rapidly hollowed out. Indian villagers, consequently, want to run away to cities faster than the cities are ready for them.

Should the focus of development be on reviving the Indian village?

Poverty in rural India can be overcome largely by addressing issues of urban poverty. The percentage of people below the poverty line is much lower in urban India and the average urban income is double that of the villager. Further, in terms of electricity and water, the urban poor fare much better. But the issue goes much deeper.

Agriculture can develop only if it functions as an industry. This cannot happen as long as small plots of land are cultivated by small farmers. Only when there is large-scale agriculture can productivity go up. For this the number of people dependent on farming must decrease. They should have the confidence to lease out their lands to large operators and move to the cities. They must have the necessary connections outside the village so that the vicissitudes of urban life do not become unbearable or intimidating for them.

Do we need a much more activist state?

This is why we need an activist state and not a rolled back state. An activist state will provide social insurance so that the poor villager no longer has to depend on kin and clan. It is this dependence that does not allow the villager to sever ties with the village and head for the cities without looking back. This is because it is the kin-clan network that provides the villager with the necessary social insurance that is needed when times are hard. When the state actively provides public goods at quality levels to the public the villager can leave the village and agricultural productivity can go up. Agriculture will then function like an industry.

Your book appears to be ambivalent on the role of NGOs and multilateral agencies involved in development. What do you think NGO priorities should be?

Good NGOs are usually driven by a sense of desperation at the utter helplessness of the people around them. Where the state is a functioning one, there are few NGOs. This explains the lack of NGOs in the West and the over abundance of them in developing countries. Bangladesh is practically NGO country. Such a situation of state inactivity also spurs the wrong kind of NGOs as well. For a durable public-private partnership the best option is for NGOs to help the government in monitoring and auditing its delivery programmes. But for this the government must take the first step. Otherwise, NGOs will continue to work and create little islands of hope but not enough to change the country. No NGO can run hospitals even at the district level for the public.

Elections now reveal that ministers who perform on development do get re-elected. But public discourse continues to focus on caste, religion. How do we change public discourse?

Public discourses on caste, religion, etc. continue because their worth still exists among those who want to make their stay in office as lucrative as possible. We can change the current discourse by calling the bluff on such arguments. Instead of asking the question: why caste matters, we should point out how caste does not matter at the level of the voter.

In any constituency above the gram sabha or even at zilla level, electoral calculations on caste grounds fail for there are too many castes that jostle against each other. In such conditions, even if one is a diehard casteist, very rarely will such a person find a person to vote for who satisfies the caste criterion. There are too many castes and not enough viable candidates. So empirically, at the voter level, caste cannot be the determining factor.

Even in places that are considered Yadav strongholds, this caste is hardly ever more than 20 per cent. Usually the percentage is between 12 to 15 per cent. West UP is considered to be a Jat stronghold, but Jats only make up about 6 per cent in most of this region. Yadavs top their presence in Muzaffarnagar by making for about 8 per cent of the population.

If one looks carefully at the places Mayawati won in 2007, it will be easily apparent that caste is not the explanatory variable. But intellectuals are equally to blame for setting up the caste bogey. Politicians like this line of thinking and encourage it for then delivery will be of little consequence and they can choose to give tickets to their favourites which are drawn on caste lines.

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