India: Poverty and Change

...Even where the politics of the poor focuses on food alone, it will be still necessary to produce enough food grain and to provide employment and earnings to the hungry to enable them to secure their share of food...

...Every Indian cannot be assured of the simple bread and rough cloth, with which he seeks to appease his hunger and cover his nakedness, unless we can help bring to him a modicum of education, a deepening of industrialization, and a host of associated changes in transport, credit, and marketing...

...Writing of the country as it was after the death of Akbar the Great, in 1605 A.D., W. H. Moreland, the distinguished historian of India, observes that there were hardly any middle classes—very few lawyers, professional teachers, journalists, or politicians...

...The meaningful politics of today has to make it impossible to acquiesce in mass poverty and gross inequalities...

...freight-carrying capacity of our railways rose from 93 million tons on originating traffic to over 200 million tons...

...That is the real essence of politics...

...2) What India Has Achieved Since Independence Under British rule the rate of increase in national income was, for decades, hardly more than 1 per cent per annum...

...But in India, if economic growth is pursued simply by and for itself, it will never gather strength...

...This is the raison d'être of welfare economics everywhere...

...And this, in turn, requires complicated social policies...

...The existing industrial corporate concerns in our country, for instance, will have about 10,500 million rupees of depreciation fund and 9 billion rupees of retained profits, etc., during the Fourth Plan period...

...Bread, to use a convenient symbol, is plentiful only when agriculture is bountiful...

...The proportion of domestic savings and investment to national income at present is respectively 11 and 14 per cent...

...Its full transformation is only a matter of time...

...By the end of the Second Plan period, we had 26 national laboratories and research institutes...

...These simple objectives demand, however, far-reaching developmental efforts and social changes...

...There is nothing more unsettling for the submerged people as they seek openings to progress than the "demonstration effect" of ostentatious living...

...Intransigence and the intractability of limited loyalties are among facts of political action...

...Over this period, land under irrigation from major and medium projects increased from 23.8 million acres to 37.5 million acres...

...And all this, let it be stressed, occurred within a democratic society, which neither could nor wished to employ the methods of authoritarianism and which had to balance off, as best it could, the claims of an enormous variety of competing social, linguistic, and regional groups...

...To sum up: Indian traditional society is rapidly breaking up...

...This is going to be our principal task in the Fourth Plan which began on April 1, 1966...

...Not only has technology opened up the viaducts of economic growth...

...We sought to do this during the Third Plan and will continue our effort during the Fourth Plan...

...The standard of living was extremely low, and the country was subjected to recurrent famines...

...Between 1950-51 and 1964-65, production of rice increased from 22.1 million tons to 38.7 million tons...

...But they have to be suffused with understanding, endowed with purpose and direction...

...Behind all these interacting social and economic features is the factor of science, applied to Indian conditions primarily in the form of technology...

...Even when one reduces the content of welfare to the bare minimum, and consciously links it with economic growth, the need for transfers remains massive, because the humanity to be reclaimed from utter want is staggering in its numbers...

...In respect to social matters, one sure index is literacy-which increased from about 16 per cent in 1950-51 to 24 per cent in 1960-61, and is estimated to be over 30 per cent now...

...The index of industrial production went up from 74 to 175 over the same period (1956 = 100...

...it is taking an increasing share in social transformation...

...Gandhi, is the main author of India's recently launched Fourth Five-Year Plan, and a leading figure in his country's democratic and socialist Left.—ED...

...The poor have continuously to precipitate the crisis—of conscience and of politics...

...Lord Buddha had to expel a close disciple from his nascent Sangh...

...We have to lower our birth rate—shall we attempt to halve it in a little over a decade...

...In such a society decisions tend to be based on custom rather than an objective examination of possibilities...

...At the time of independence (1947), barely 5 per cent of our national income was saved and invested...

...This is what we have been struggling to change all these years since independence...

...These twin requirements demand, first, a greater developmental effort and, second, the transfer of resources from the better-off to the underprivileged and needy...

...The fast development of infrastructural, industrial, and chemical technologies in our economy has opened the door enlarging the scale of agricultural technology...

...Production of finished steel increased from one million to 4.4 million tons and aluminium from 3,700 tons to 56,000 tons...

...between 1950-51 and the present...

...But that growth, in our conditions, must remain impeded unless we have widening social changes...

...International peace cannot survive if rich nations ignore the needs of the poor ones...

...to over 10 million kw...

...Regarding infrastructural facilities, installed electric power capacity rose from 2.3 million kw...

...and this is true the world over...

...Of this number, about 3,700 work at universities...

...It is precisely this—large injections of science together with large injections of democratic practice—that we have sought to administer into the social body of our country over the last two decades...

...If we are suffering from a severe food crisis now—as we are indeed—it is not because there has been no progress in agriculture, but because the progress is not commensurate with our large population increase at the same time...

...The modern sector of the economy will soon reach limits of expansion if the traditional sectors do not expand and modernize...

...We realize that without the introduction of higher technology into the field of agriculture, a total transformation of our still preponderantly agricultural economy is impossible...

...But advanced agricultural techniques become really effective only after the infrastructural, industrial, and chemical technology have been fully developed...

...Once the power base was secured, we had little difficulty in introducing industrial technology of a diverse kind...

...Socrates was given hemlock by his fellow citizens...

...If it is foolish to juxtapose bread against freedom, it is equally futile to counterpose a basket of bread against a basket of wider achievements...

...The reader should bear in mind that Mehta's main concern here is not with a rounded theory of social change in an underde veloped country, but rather with the inner dialogue which occurs among those who must face the immediate problems of Indian society...

...Half the rural households have an income that is almost the same as that of the top 5 per cent...

...In a traditional society it is sadly missing...

...The number of medical colleges increased from 30 in 1950-51 to 35 at present, with annual admissions increasing from about 2,500 to 11,500...

...Production of sulphuric acid went up from under 104,000 tons to 695,000 tons, caustic soda from 11,000 tons to 191,000 tons, and drugs and medicines from 150 million rupees to 1,350 million rupees in value...

...During the First Five-Year Plan, we completed work on the establishment of national laboratories for physics, chemistry, metallurgy, fuel, glass and ceramics, food technology, drugs, electro-chemistry, road research, etc...

...In the developing countries, regions that have moved forward will progress faster than the sluggish and the stagnant...

...They will thus expand and proliferate...

...Science means not only those operations by which we gain sys tematic and objective knowledge of the world around and within us, but those by which we apply this knowledge to controlling that world...

...In China, it is probably one-half of 1 per cent...

...The ratio is about 3 per cent in the United States, 2.5 per cent in the United Kingdom and the U.S.S.R., and about 1.5 per cent in Japan...

...Consumption of electricity for agriculture increased from 20 to 140 million rupees in value, while that of fuel oil jumped from 45 million to 251 million rupees...

...It is the large-scale introduction of science in the form of technology which has provided the most important dynamic in India during the past twenty years...

...Experience the world over shows that economic transformation does involve imposts on the rural people...

...But unless we accept austere standards for this elite, our consumption claims will eat into savings, erode investments, and multiply the miseries of the poor...

...The rich nations will be able to use new technology and augment their resources faster than poorer countries...

...The process by which we seek to lower the birth rate is coupled with expanding medical and social education...

...In the last analysis, our planning is nothing but an ordered and sequential application of a complex of higher forms of technology to all departments of life...

...given the same determination, it should not take more than twenty years to ensure for us economic freedom...

...Our rural sector is large and almost half of our national income comes from it...

...Elsewhere it was possible to choose between economic growth and social change, and even to arrange them in some sequential relationship...

...Now that the mortality rate is coming down, our major aim in the next three plan periods is the reduction of the birth rate...

...Jesus Christ was betrayed with a kiss to the Roman legions by his immediate associate...

...hence the outlays will have to be balanced by savings from the top layers of agricultural households...

...In the economic field, we made a beginning by introducing, on an unprecedented scale, different forms of infrastructural technology...

...1) The Heritage of Traditional Society India has been a traditional society for centuries...

...Introduction of higher forms of technology and techniques in the social field has also engaged our attention...

...Enrollment in art, science, and commercial courses at the university level increased from 300,000 to 1.10 million, while admission capacity in technical education increased from 5,900 and 4,120 respectively for diploma and degree courses to 51,450 and 27,850 respectively...

...Whatever the description, I am sure there is unanimity on one point: the rigors of traditional existence have been broken in India once and for all...

...Such are the signs of economic transition...

...Based on universal adult franchise, our young republic of over 475 million people is the world's largest democracy...

...One sure way of breaking the closed circuit of such a society is the injection of science in ample measure...

...Asoka Mehta, Minister of Planning and Social Welfare in the cabinet of Mrs...

...There were no men of science investigating peasant problems, no skilled engineers designing implements to meet their needs, and no financial talents devoted to organizing their market or supplying capital to them...

...There is another reason also, which we cannot emphasize but cannot ignore...

...We have thus entered, this last year, the most critical phase of our economic development...

...Enrollment in primary schools, which was 19 million and covered only 43 per cent of the age group of six- to eleven-year-olds, increased to nearly 52 million, covering nearly 79 per cent of the same age group by 1965-66...

...Non-basic consumption, which embraces in our country not only the frivolities of the rich but also the comforts of the middle classes, retards economic growth and slackens the efficiency of those whom we want to draw into more productive pursuits...

...but when the votes are counted, a certain pattern of opinion is revealed...

...Our research ratio, or the proportion of expenditure on research and development expressed as a percentage of our GNP, would be a little less than one-fourth of one per cent...

...Finally, the development of our chemical base makes it possible for us to introduce far-reaching changes in agricultural technology...

...A parallel advance is the introduction of facilities for pure and applied research and development...

...and a politics of scarcity can easily degenerate into a politics ofscramble...

...With the development of a metallurgical base, it became possible for us to introduce the technology of heavy machine building...

...Such a two-pronged attack would open up possibilities wherein the people would experience the glow of change...

...For a short while enclaves of development and prosperity will emerge, but lacking spread-effect, they will remain insecure...

...4) The Rich Countries and the Poor We have been depending on external assistance for reaching a 13 per cent rate of investment in our economy even when our savings account for only 10.5 per cent of the national income...

...At the beginning of the Second Plan, apart from research at 33 universities, we had 16 national laboratories, and 54 associations of scientific and technological research...

...Let us look at the condition of agriculture...

...Once Gandhiji made it impossible for us to acquiesce in subjection...

...Economic growth is the ultimate solvent of our gross misery...

...The greatest curse of a traditional society is its frustrating denial of the scientific attitude...

...Where such an attitude prevails, decisions more readily become objective and rational...

...specifically, those relating to the development of power, irrigation, and transport...

...If these surpluses are to be made available to the poorer sections of the villages, they must be assured of earnings...

...I believe that as the poor have a claim upon the resources of the rich, so also poor nations can seek aid from rich nations, if the concept of world community has any meaning and world peace is to abide...

...The possibilities for further agricultural development can emerge only when traditional bounds are overcome...

...In the urban-industrial sector inequalities are even sharper...

...5) The Politics of Class and Nation What has this "hocus-pocus" of planning to do with politics, whose substance we know is drawn from caste and community, from local grievances and regional peculiarities, from personal frustrations and group antipathies...

...Group interests will always operate in politics...

...In India today our population increases at almost 2.5 per cent per year...

...Coal was not mined, and the production of copper and iron was limited by the availability of wood...

...It is this characteristic of growth that validates the principle of redistribution, of transfer of resources, from the better placed to the badly set...

...It is that pattern of opinion and understanding one has to influence and shape, though none can organize the wayward impulses behind every vote...

...For economic growth to achieve sustained momentum, it will have to be stoked by social change...

...Yet, within the tradi tional confines of agricultural production, the possibilities of growth are limited, and a considerable part of them has already been exhausted...

...We are conscious that this ratio is much less than that in more industrialized countries...

...3) Technology and the Process of Change It would be a mistake to think that the economic and social features of the transition just outlined belong to separate compartments...

...Much of this work was done during the first two Plan periods when we took up integrated, multi-purpose river valley projects...

...that is, when new tools and techniques, new skills and scientific understanding are brought to bear...

...The rate of saving in our economy is now 10.5 per cent...

...crude oil from .25 million tons to 2.13 million tons, and that of bauxite from 65,000 tons to 613,000 tons...

...Excluding research personnel employed in the regular collection of data in standardizing lines such as metereological and hydrological observations, etc., a recent estimate puts the number of research scientists in our country who work more or less on a full-time basis, at roughly 12,000 in 1962-63...

...It took nearly thirty years of determination and dedication to achieve political freedom...

...What follows are observations taken from a speech delivered in 1966 to a gathering of Indian students and from an essay published in an Indian journal during the same year...

...Indian society is in a state of political, economic, and social transition...

...Surely the rest-80 per cent— cannot experience significant change unless the burdens are more equitably adjusted—whether through a grain tax or other imposts on the better-placed...

...Politics always operates in its peculiar penumbra...

...A voter votes on a myriad differing considerations...

...surely, this fact alone indicates that Western aid today should be regarded not as a sentimental gift, but a just return on investment...

...iron ore from 3 million tons to 15 million tons...

...This was initiated during the Second Plan and involved the introduction of metallurgical, chemical, mechanical, and electrical technology...

...It might be argued that the politics of a poor country is simple—the quest for bread...

...The organization of social life is hierarchical...

...This has come about through the introduction of science, chiefly in the application of a higher technology...

...Finally, geared to a low level of economic productivity, such a society is perpetually in the grip of a sad fatalism...

...If we cannot, for a variety of rational reasons, seek a flat sharing of poverty, we do have to work for the priority of investment over nonbasic consumption while yet providing basic consumption to the millions...

...Life expectancy increased from 33 in 1950-51 to 45 years at present...

...India's is a politics "of scarcity," as Myron Weiner has aptly described it...

...and during the past four years, 4.4 per cent...

...It is the logic of development that those that have tend to get more...

...On the other side, we have to step up our savings and investment to 20 per cent in a decade or so...

...And our research here is still in a rudimentary stage...

...Three general elections (a fourth will have taken place in February, 1967) at inter vals of five years, while imparting a measure of political stability, have also generated a socio-cultural tension which has far-reaching implications for our future development...

...Perhaps this is the most difficult area in the whole field of economic and social development because here techniques cannot be copies but must be fashioned from our own experience...

...In a country such as India, even the elementary needs of the people—food and work—require stringent transfers of resources...

...Such a politics can only damage the poor...

...So also, within our country, if the upper levels of the society resent the demands of development on their earnings, they will ultimately have to find greater resources to maintain civil peace...

...But in our conditions we either do not get bread at all or we get bread and other things too...

...wheat production from 6.8 million tons to 12.7 million tons...

...Simultaneously, we are introducing higher forms of chemical technology in the form of petroleum refineries...

...In health, our principal objective during the first three plan periods was the application of techniques relating life sciences and medicine to the reduction of mortality...

...Production of machinery over the same period rose from a rupee value of 106 million to 2,310 million...

...The managerial elite insists upon having standards comparable to those in the West...

...Depending on their background and predispositions, different people describe the outcome in different ways: disap= pointing, encouraging, dismaying, devastating...

...By resisting the worthwhile, one often succumbs to the worthless...

...It is clear that what development needs is neither consensus alone nor pure coercion, but a continuum of consensus and coercion: a widespread consensus that does not hesitate to coerce the intransigent when necessary...

...It is not ideology that leads us to accent social change—it is stubborn demographic and sociological facts...

...during the second five years, 4 per cent...

...Although there were some improvements by the time the British left, these did not affect the overwhelmingly traditional character of our society...

...A recent survey has confirmed that the pattern of distribution of income in the rural households is such that the bottom 30 per cent have an income which is only a little more than the top 1 per cent...

...We shall either gain both or neither...

...the infant mortality rate fell from 154 to 109...

...The death rate fell from 26 per thousand in 1950-51 to 16 per thousand at present...

...Fertilizer consumption went up from a value of 70 million rupees to 825 million rupees, while consumption of pesticides increased from 20 million rupees to 120 million rupees in value...

...Here, new techniques are underway...

...On the social plane, the stage is set to borrow from the behavioral sciences in order to change our attitudes and motivation...

...The reason is crisply stated by William McCord in his book, The Springtime of Freedom: In essence, the developing nations of today subsidized Europe as it began its economic advance (through the Colonial Drain...

...More specifically, production of coal increased from 32.6 million tons in 1950-51 to 64.3 million tons in 1964-65...

...cotton from 552,000 tons to 960,000 tons and jute from 631,000 tons to 1,080,000 tons...

...The enrollment in middle schools increased from 3.12 million to 11 million and in high schools from 1.22 million to 5.24 million over the same period...

...What of industry...

...Even when agricultural production goes up, the marketable surpluses are apt to accrue to the larger holders of land...

...This means that we are still hovering at the edge of stagnation...

...Finally, the most sophisticated techniques of social science, including psychology, sociology, and anthropology, will be required to bring up the psycho-social level of the people, including nearly one-fourth of the population who are listed as scheduled castes and tribals...

...Half the agricultural income flows to 20 per cent of the rural households...

...Positions in such a society are inherited rather than achieved...

...Between 1950-51 and 1964-65, India's national income increased by about 69 per cent, or at a compound rate of 3.8 per cent yearly: the rate of increase during the first five years was 3.4 per cent...

...For example, the process by which we seek to expand our technical education is really parallel to that, let us say, of industrial development...

...Those earnings—arising from investments—have to be balanced by savings, if inflation is to be avoided...