Will There Be Any Hope For The Poor?

Poverty isn't defined merely by GDP. It has political and educational causes, and multidimensional remedies

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Furthermore, the growth of GDP is not the only economic issue of importance. Reducing political deprivation can indeed help diminish economic vulnerability. There is, for example, considerable evidence that democracy as well as political and civil rights can help generate economic security, by giving voice to the deprived and the vulnerable. The fact that famines occur only under authoritarian rule and military dominance, and that no major famine has ever occurred in an open, democratic country (even when the country is very poor), merely illustrates the most elementary aspect of the protective power of political liberty. Though Indian democracy has many imperfections, the political incentives generated by it have nevertheless been adequate to eliminate major famines right from the time of independence in 1947 (the last famine was four years before that, in 1943, which I witnessed as a child).

In contrast, China, which did much better than India in several respects, such as the spread of basic education and health care, had the largest famine in recorded history in 1959-62, with a death toll that has been estimated at 30 million. Right now, the three countries with continuing famines are also in the grip of authoritarian and military rule: North Korea, Ethiopia and Sudan.

In fact, the protective power of democracy in providing security is much more extensive than famine prevention. The poor in booming South Korea or Indonesia may not have given much thought to democracy when the economic fortunes of all seemed to go up and up together. But when the economic crises came (and divided they fell), political and civil rights were desperately missed by those whose economic means and lives were unusually battered. Democracy has become a central issue in these countries now: in South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and elsewhere.

Democracy, which is valuable in its own right, may not be especially effective economically all the time, but it comes into its own when a crisis threatens and the economically dispossessed need the voice that democracy gives them. Among the lessons of the Asian economic crisis is the importance of social safety nets, democratic rights and political voice. Political deprivation can reinforce economic destitution.

To look at a different type of interconnection, there is plenty of evidence from the positive experience of East and Southeast Asia that the removal of social deprivation can be very influential in stimulating economic growth and sharing the fruits of growth more evenly. If India went wrong, the fault lay not only in the suppression of market opportunities but also in the lack of attention to social poverty (for example, in the form of widespread illiteracy). India has reaped as it has sown by cultivating higher education (its booming software industry is only one effect of that), but the country has paid dearly for leaving nearly half the people illiterate. Social poverty has helped perpetuate economic poverty as well.

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