Book review: T. Haque and D. N. Reddy (Eds.),India: Social Development Report 2018

The biennial publication of the Council for Social Development (CSD), the India Social Development Report (SDR) has, over the years, become among the best compendiums of commentaries on social and economic development challenges facing the country. Following this tradition, the 2018 edition of the SDR takes a comprehensive view of rising inequalities in India through 21 articles and a methodologically sound Social Development Index. The subject of inequality has been a recurring theme in India over the past three decades since the adoption of neoliberal reforms; the vastness of the problems is effectively captured by the essays in this volume. Successive governments have been loath to accept the reality of the ever-deepening divide in Indian society; the compelling evidence put forth in the latest edition of the SDR should serve as the basis for reworking policies for a more equitable India.

T. Haque and D. Narasimha Reddy, the editors of the SDR, provide a useful backdrop to the volume. Arguing that inequality is multi-dimensional and complex they identify dimensions of inequality to see how they are distributed among individuals, households and groups. Haque and Reddy provide two useful perspectives to understand social inequality: inequality of outcomes, which relates to wealth and income levels, and inequality of opportunities, access to education and employment.

In keeping with the perspective set by Haque and Reddy, the SDR covers six dimensions of inequality: inequality and economic development, inter-regional and rural–urban inequality, inequality in factor markets, gender inequality, inequality and access to education and healthcare, and exclusion of marginalised groups.

Pulin B. Nayak’s essay, ‘Inequality and Economic Development’ provides the necessary conceptual understanding between economic development and inequality. Nayak points out that focus on the phenomenon of rising inequality has remained undiminished from the era of the classical thinkers down to present-day commentators like Thomas Piketty. Post-Independence, India according to the author, faced the rising burden of inequality due to a lack of adequate supply of what should be considered as essential public goods for a relatively poor economy, especially health and education.

C. P. Chandrasekhar in his contribution informs us about rising ‘Wealth and Income Inequality in the Age of Finance’. The author discusses the growth of wealth inequality in developed and emerging markets alike and explains how wealth inequality has grown in India from the beginning of the previous decade. He also alludes to the increase in financial wealth, an important aspect of growing inequality in the process of financialisation of economies.

B. P. Vani and S. Madheswaran analyse the prevalence of inequities in India through the concept of wellbeing, a multi-dimensional concept covering living standards, housing health and education, and political and social network. The authors analyse the data available from the India Human Development Survey for 2004–2005 and 2011–2012. Measuring multi-dimensional wellbeing at the level of households, Vani and Madheswaran provide estimates of the inequality that pervade the country across social groups and the states. These estimates reinforce the understanding about the inequality existing in India through its multiple manifestations.

N. C. Saxena’s essay on ‘Interstate Inequality in India’ explains the proximate factors responsible for regional disparities. The author lists four factors: social sector expenditure, inter-state fiscal transfers, flow of funds from the Centre to the states and governance-related issues. Saxena argues that improvement in governance through improving capacities within the administration could help in improving the utilisation of funds that are provided to mitigate poverty and inequality.

T. Haque discusses one of the more piquant problems, namely inequities faced by the farming community. The author focusses on the target set by the prime minister to double farmers’ incomes by 2022 and dwells on the ways in which this target can be achieved. Haque identifies six main challenges: improving the pace and quality of technological innovations, reducing the multifarious risks facing farmers, horizontal and vertical diversification, land reforms, increasing public and private investment in agriculture and climate change adaptation. It is interesting to note that Haque’s proposals virtually tantamount to the adoption of an agricultural policy which governments in office since Independence have failed to put in place.

Migration is both a trigger and a consequence of inequities in India and this dimension has been underlined by the essay contributed by Amitabh Kundu and K. Varghese. The authors show that trends and patterns of migration in India have altered during the three decades prior to 2011. One significant conclusion arrived at by the authors is that socio-economically vulnerable groups, particularly Muslims, have increasingly found it difficult to access urban and metropolitan space.

Himanshu’s essay on ‘Inequality in Rural India’ provides some interesting insights into inequality using data from village surveys provided by the Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI). The essay suggests that the emergence of a non-farm sector alongside a declining agrarian economy has resulted in rising inequality in the former sector. It also concludes that relatively disadvantaged groups have benefited from this churning of the village economy in terms of additional incomes and employment opportunities.

The authors compare the structure of the labour markets in Brazil and India. The trends in wage inequality have not been exactly similar in the two countries from the mid-1990s. While wage inequality declined in Brazil, in India it was the opposite except for rural areas since 2004–2005. The two trends show the importance of policy interventions in the two countries, namely, the Bolsa Familia in Brazil and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) in India.

K. P. Kannan explains the underlying factors behind wage inequality in India. The author identifies four factors that are responsible for wage disparities: gender, location, education and social identity. Education and social identity were the most significant factors causing inequality, according to the author. Data provided in the paper shows that wage inequality increased in the first decade following the economic reforms and declined in the next decade, but only in the bottom half of the wage workers. However, persistence of very low wages reduced the significance of the decline in wage inequality.

Nitya Rao and Ayesha Pervez discuss various dimensions of gender equality. Their contribution speaks of some progress in reducing overall gender gaps, for example in schooling, although this progress was uneven across social groups and regions. In most other important areas, including political participation, health and nutrition, and labour force participation, women have continued to struggle in what continue to be male-dominated fields. The relentless violence against women remain the dark side of Indian society as have been the challenges faced constantly by the LGBTQ community.

Women’s access to land remains a vexed issue, according to Hema Swaminathan and Suchitra J. Y. Gender inequality in the ownership of land is considerably high in India—overall the incidence of ownership of agricultural land was more than six times lower for women as compared to men at the beginning of the previous decade. The variation across states was considerable, for instance, it was more than 13 times in West Bengal and over 3 times in Kerala. In the context of increasing feminisation of farm management due to the migration of male members, existing inequities in land ownership become even more magnified.

Access to higher education in India remains highly iniquitous, according to Jandhyala B. G. Tilak and Pradip Kumar Choudhury. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) remains abysmally low for a country that has set its sights on becoming one of the largest economies in the next decade. More than the overall GER, which has remained well below 30 per cent, as compared to well over 50 per cent for China, the variations in GER across groups remains the more significant challenge. Tilak and Choudhury report that for the bottom decile among rural females, GER was less than 7 per cent in 2013–2014 and was below 9 per cent for rural males.

Ashok Pankaj and Poornima M. report from their field surveys that access to elementary education too remains highly unequal. This has arisen largely because of increasing privatisation of school education and a decline in the number of government schools. A large number of school-going children, belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, who are also among the low-income groups, are hugely dependent on government schools and it is their access to education that has been impacted.

Another perspective on school education has been provided by Rangachar Govinda and Madhumita Bandopadhyay in their essay that considers exclusion and inequality in Indian education. The authors dwell on the persistence of inequalities in education and reflect on the ways in which the gaps can be narrowed. Govinda and Bandopadhyay report that commendable progress has been made during the past few decades to bring children into primary schools. However, regular attendance, retention and satisfactory completion continue to be problem areas. One suggestion made by the authors is to revisit the concept of the common school and to initiate reforms that can instill the spirit of this concept.

Muchkund Dubey has long been an advocate of the common school system (CSS) and according to him, it can provide a solution to the inherent problems of implementing the Right to Education (RTE) Act. Although the RTE Act was a major step towards universalisation of education, the initiatives taken by the government have fallen woefully short of expectations following the enactment of the Act. Dubey suggests that the only way in which the constitutional obligations to provide free and compulsory education to all children on a non-discriminatory basis can be met is to introduce a CCS. A state-run CCS has delivered the goal of universalising quality education in an overwhelming number of countries, he argues.

Healthcare is another critical area where inequities have been rife. Anup K. Karan and Sakthivel Selvaraj dwell on the financial implications of illness among casual labour households in their essay. Using NSSO data for 2014, Karan and Selvaraj provide a detailed analysis on the financial burden that their target population has to bear because of the cost of medical care. The authors conclude that despite the fact that the government has been implementing the National Rural Health Mission and the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, out-of-pocket expenses on healthcare continues to be high since affordable drugs have not been made available to the poor.

K. Srinath Reddy reflects on the ability of the National Health Policy of 2017 (NHP 2017) to deliver on the formidable challenges that India faces in providing access to healthcare to its citizens. Reddy finds that the NHP 2017 offers clearly defined pathway towards achieving the goal of Universal Health Coverage by 2030, but this can only be achieved if there is substantial increase in public funding.

D. Narasimha Reddy considers the problem of social inequality that has persisted seven decades after the Constitution of India had proposed steps to eradicate it. Reddy analyses the implementation of the reservation policy in favour of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes and concludes that although members of these communities were able to get better education over the decades, their job opportunities have not been adequately been met for a number of reasons. Unequal opportunities are faced by individuals and groups on account of their social backgrounds.

In the final essay of the SDR, K. B. Saxena provides what he calls a, ‘modest agenda for the elimination of the marginalisation of dalits, adivasis and Muslims’. The core of the agenda proposed by Saxena is affirmative action by providing legal safeguards. The first of these is to provide protection against the violence against them by the majority by ensuring, among others, that their rights under the statutory laws are respected. Saxena proposes several steps for the elimination of economic and cultural marginalisation, social exclusion, political exclusion and governance.

Social Development Index, a detailed exercise undertaken by Surajit Deb, is an excellent addition to the volume. Scholars and policymakers will find the index prepared by Deb very useful. This is a methodologically-sound exercise that needs to be adopted by government agencies to understand the problem of social inequality better as a step towards developing effective intervention strategies.