April 29, 2005
LETTER FROM ASIA
Mystery of India's Poverty: Can the State Break
Its Grip?
By AMY WALDMAN
Amy Waldman/The New York Times
In Baradpur, schoolboys get a serving of lentils and rice. Some economists say the focus should be on jobs and growth.
ARADPUR, India - In torn clothes, the boys, Western industrialized societies. But they took
mostly low-caste children of laborers, held out centuries of effort and upheaval to take shape.
their plates to be served from a steaming vat of
gruel. The image was Dickensian, but it represented How much more staggering the task, then, for India.
not 19th-century England's abdication of The country ranks 127th out of 177 countries on the
responsibility toward the poor but 21st-century United Nations Human Development Index, which
India's seeming embrace of it. measures life span, education and living standard.
Nearly half its children are undernourished, a level
The children are beneficiaries of an acclaimed worse than sub-Saharan Africa.
program mandated in 2001 by India's Supreme Court
to provide cooked lunches to all primary As the social welfare movement expands its goals,
schoolchildren. The program is the signature success debate is expanding, too, over the obligations of the
of a movement in India that is working to create for state toward the poor, what India's government can
the poor an entitlements-based social welfare system do, and whether betterment can or should be left to
much like Europe's. economic growth alone.
But this is India, home to the world's largest For example, the movement's latest effort - to get a
concentration of poor, where some 350 million law guaranteeing the rural poor jobs on public works
people still live on less than a dollar a day. So the projects - has proved deeply controversial.
effort has inevitably raised questions as enormous as
the challenge: not least, can poor nations have a As originally envisioned, the employment law would
social safety net, too? have guaranteed one member of any rural household
100 days' minimum-wage employment a year on a
Such questions have divided economists, public works project near home.
policymakers and advocates here in recent months,
reflecting the uncertain science of poverty reduction, Resisting the costs, the Congress-led coalition
the political and financial pressures tugging at this government has since substantially pared back the
democracy of more than a billion people, and an bill. Advocates for the poor say the later version
India conflicted about the face it wants to present to would leave vulnerable most of the more than 90
the world. percent of India's labor force that has no
unemployment insurance or pension enrollment. The
Welfare and workfare programs are today taken for weaker version is close to enactment now.
granted to assist the needy in otherwise prosperous
The competing visions for the law reflect a similarly A national employment guarantee would absorb and
deep divide among economists. One school of supplant much of the patchwork quilt of antipoverty
thought argues that simply unleashing the economy - programs that the government has financed over the
by allowing more foreign investment, selling off decades. Most of them offer food for labor on public
unprofitable state-owned companies and cutting red works projects.
tape - will reduce poverty more than a new
government program. In many places, those programs have become
essential buffers against drought and landlessness.
They point to government estimates that the But they also have been plagued by waste and
proportion of people living in poverty dropped from corruption, a record cited by those who argue that a
36 percent to 26 percent of the population in the first nationwide employment program would funnel more
decade after economic reforms, which began in money not to the poor but rather to corrupt
1991. politicians, bureaucrats and local power brokers.
"Where energy and policy should go is how to Mr. Dreze concedes there are abuses and waste, but
accelerate the growth, and not be distracted by these says remedies could be made available - a strong
old slogans that really made sense 40 years ago," right to information law, for example - that could
said Surjit S. Bhalla, an economist who opposes the allow local communities to monitor how public
employment law. funds are used.
The finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, He was among those responsible for India's most
made a similar argument in an interview, saying that significant social welfare expansion in recent years,
while an employment guarantee could "keep the pot the midday meal program, which resulted from a suit
boiling once a day," it would not end poverty. That that challenged the government to use its vast stores
could be done, he said, only through 7 to 8 percent of rice and wheat to alleviate hunger. In response,
annual growth and "real jobs." the Supreme Court ordered the government to
provide cooked lunches in all of the country's
The counterargument is made by Jean Dreze, an schools.
economist of Belgian origin who is now an Indian
citizen, and the employment guarantee's most vocal The program has so far reached only about 55
champion. percent of Indian children because several large
states have lagged in putting it in place. But where it
Mr. Dreze says that even if the poverty-reduction has gone into effect, it has had a discernible impact.
figures are valid, which many economists dispute,
the economy would have to grow at a much faster Teachers at the government primary school for boys
rate than even the most optimistic estimates if it in this town near Delhi say the lunch - usually a
were to truly improve the lot of the poor. bolstering mix of lentils and rice - has brought to
school some 50 or 60 children who were otherwise
"The way we're going now it is going to take forever regularly absent.
to get people to an acceptable living standard," he
said. A study by the Center for Social Equity in New
Delhi said the program had especially helped retain
Even 1 percent of gross domestic product - the girls, who are often the first denied schooling in poor
expected price tag for the employment law - was a families; improved child nutrition; and encouraged
small price to pay for easing hunger, stemming mixing among castes.
seasonal migration and reducing child labor, he
argued. But even some advocates for the poor question
adding a new entitlement, like the proposed
employment law, when many current ones, notably classes of rambunctious boys sat on the sandy
public health, are so badly administered. ground.
Public education too is in disarray, and while any The teachers, earning about $230 a month, are
schooling is better than none, it still seems odd to decently paid by Indian standards. But on the day a
ask teachers here how much the midday meal reporter visited, only 5 of 11 teachers were present;
program has improved learning, given how little the rest had taken early leave for coming holidays.
learning is going on.
For some children, then, the meal has taken on more
One building is crumbling so badly that it has not value than their education. The boys are supposed to
been used for five or six years. In the other, newly bring their own plates, but many are too poor to do
built, all but one classroom is used to lock away so. So they line up with their miniblackboards,
benches and tables that the teachers say would be notebooks or schoolbooks held out. The gruel is
stolen if left outside. So on a recent day, three slopped on to their learning from the day.
Amy Waldman for The New York
Times
A study by the Center for
Social Equity in New Delhi
said the meal program had
improved child nutrition
and encouraged mixing
among castes.