Abstract
A former civil servant—he was a member of the elite Indian Administrative Service—over the last 20 years, Anirudh Krishna has completed an extraordinary body of empirical research on the dynamics of poverty and on social mobility in India (and, in his research on poverty, in several other countries, too). In this book, he draws on that research, which has provided interview data, he calculates, from upwards of 40,000 people, and that has been published in an important academic monograph, and in articles that have appeared in leading journals in development studies and political science (25 are listed in the bibliography), to provide an analysis of the problems of human development in India that is both authoritative and immensely readable. There is, in my view, neither finer nor more compelling analysis of the problems of poverty in India—and though one wishes for more substantial treatment of the politics and the social relationships that keep so many people poor, the book also includes significant arguments about what needs to be done.
The book has been written for the general reader, and it includes any number of memorable stories of particular people whom the author has met, some of them are his neighbours in the village in Rajasthan, in which he keeps a home, and that illuminate particular points that he wants to make. One story that sticks in my mind is that of Chandru, a boy who had suffered from polio, whom Krishna met by chance in a village in Andhra Pradesh, and who turned out to have a flair for mathematics—proving able to solve a problem that Krishna himself struggled with. Chandru wanted to be an engineer, but in spite of Krishna’s efforts to help him to realize his dreams, he remained in the village because of his father’s insistence that ‘No one from here can be an engineer’ (p. 27). The story illustrates an argument about the importance of beliefs and attitudes in influencing the possibilities of mobility for village people in India. It combines with an account of research findings from 105 villages in three states on the highest occupational achievements of village people over a 10-year period—which were usually village schoolteacher, police constable or ordinary soldier. The mention of just two or three doctors and engineers showed what might have been achieved by others. The broader argument is the very limited social mobility in India, especially for individuals who are born and grow up in rural society (who still make up the vast majority of India’s population). On the whole, as Krishna puts it, ‘the apple has not fallen far from the tree: there is substantial intergenerational continuity in occupation type and income category’ (p. 125). The style of the book is to bring together stories of individuals, such as Chandru, with accounts of the findings from Krishna’s own studies and those of other researchers. The reader trips over no references in the text, but for the scholar, the sources of the evidence and arguments that appear in the book are found in 68 pages of detailed notes and another 60 pages of references.
The chapter is entitled ‘The Dollar Economy and the Rupee Economy’, capturing an observation that must be familiar to many travellers in India, that it is perfectly possible to pay as much, or more, for a dinner or a cup of coffee, as in any big city in the West—a coffee say, for ₹350—though an excellent meal or a coffee might be bought elsewhere for much less. A cup of coffee, say, for ₹20, in a roadside café. The idea of the existence side-by-side of a dollar economy and a rupee economy is a powerful way of thinking about inequality in the Indian society (the argument is developed by Krishna and Pieterse [2008]). Krishna estimates that only about 3 per cent of Indians are ‘dollar economy people’. This sets the scene for his examination of the problem of why high rates of economic growth and the pursuit of education, have not delivered more for so many Indians. He eschews the ‘bird’s-eye view’ of most economists for a ‘worm’s-eye view’, based on field studies of the experience and the perspectives of mainly poor people. The argument proceeds through an analysis of the problems of agriculture in what is still largely an agrarian society (and especially for the 70% of the rural population living in villages more than 5 km away from a town); then of what Krishna calls the ‘broken ladder’, the factors that severely limit the prospects of rural people once they reach the town (as very many do, for according to Krishna’s estimates between 80 and 150 million rural people are on the move in India today); analysis of the pervasive vulnerability that characterizes Indian society, and of how both this and the broken ladder are influenced by ‘divisive attitudes in an information poor society’; and finally examination of the failures of the Indian state. The book concludes with some rather general ideas about the reform of the state.
The core argument of the book, based on methodologically innovative research, challenges much of the mainstream analysis of poverty in India, and the policies pursued by successive governments. Perhaps the key point that Krishna makes is that the official picture of fast declining poverty—the extraordinary variation in different official estimates notwithstanding—hides the facts that large numbers of people fall into poverty each year, and that the great majority remain in the ‘poverty zone’, just above the official poverty line (effectively, being liable to move in and out of poverty over quite short periods). He writes: Official statistics tend to depict a rosy-picture of fast declining poverty, suggesting a situation in which people are only moving up—and out of poverty. But India has one of the highest rates of poverty creation internationally. Between three and five per cent of the country’s population falls into poverty each year, adding to the large number of people already poor…Vulnerability to shocks is pervasive. Many who have moved out of poverty continue feeling its gravitational attraction (p. 22).
Krishna goes on to argue that poverty alleviation schemes of the Government of India—notably the employment programme that gives rural households the right to 100 days of publically provided employment per year at a locally set minimum wage—do make a difference, though more in some states than in others. But they do not effectively address the problem of preventing future poverty. Very often, people fall into poverty because of episodes of ill-health (and Krishna’s monograph has the title One Illness Away [2010]). Improvement of public health care, not just a matter of more money—though this is important given India’s very low level of public spending in this field—but also of radically improved governance, matters much more in the long run than poverty alleviation programmes.
Then there is the question of what constrains Indians from achieving more, as a nation and individually— as a nation, from winning Olympic medals or submitting more patent applications or as individuals, from achieving greater social mobility. Here, Krishna draws on his own research on the factors influencing entry into good engineering colleges or business schools, that provide platforms and the training required for entry into higher paying jobs. The research shows that people brought up in rural areas are at a severe disadvantage and that those from rural backgrounds who are also members of the Scheduled Castes or Tribes, and especially those who are also women, have virtually no chance at all of entering these sorts of colleges. They confront many problems—lack of information, lack of role models and lack of enabling facilities like libraries—and perhaps most fundamentally, the problem of the very poor quality of education in India. Krishna devotes considerable attention to the problems of education in India and how they may be addressed.
In the end, then, the book is a passionate statement of the need in India for very much better public services. The last two chapters are about what needs to be done to reform the state. There is much more to it than just decentralisation, which is what the title of the important seventh chapter, ‘Democracy at the Doorstep’, might suggest. Krishna advances arguments about how the hierarchical, highly centralised, bottom-heavy bureaucracy (so many personnel in the ranks of the peons, clerks and drivers, while there are so few administrators capable of addressing the problems of public administration creatively), staffed by demotivated people, might be reformed. This is the least satisfactory part of the book, though there is no doubt that vitally important problems are effectively diagnosed.
The book concludes with a vision—a statement of what Krishna describes as ‘ambitious but realistic goals’: (a) a minimum threshold—‘no citizen of India should live in conditions that do not come up to a minimally acceptable standard’; (b) there should be equality of opportunity—‘she must be able to rise to the level of her capabilities’; and (c) democracy at the doorstep—‘the protections, opportunities and benefits of democracy must be easily accessible to all’ (pp. 30–31 and 237–239). It is a sad reflection on the state of India today that these goals are as far from realisation as ever they have been.