Myths about India - Book Report/Review Example

JOURNAL ENTRIES Myth Just 22 percent of Indians are poor. This is India’s official poverty rate, but it counts only those in the most abject circumstances -- and even a cursory scan of India’s human development indicators suggests more widespread deprivation. The Empowerment Line reveals that 56 percent of Indians, some 680 million, lack the means to meet their basic needs. Just above the official poverty line, some 413 million are "vulnerable." They have only a tenuous grip on a better standard of living, and shocks such as illness or a lost job can easily push them back into desperate circumstances. This problem has two very critical implications. First is the actual statistics. Twenty two percent is still an incredible number given India’s population of more than one billion. This equates to at least more than 220 million living in extreme poverty. The definition of this classification – of abject condition - involves an incapacity to support basic needs as well as a failure to access welfare services. Death and disease are therefore ordinary occurrences. Taking a look at the grim circumstance for those living below the poverty line, one could recognize that it is approaching the proportion of humanitarian crisis that could rival the ravages of war, plague and famine. The second implication is, of course, the classification of poverty rate. While there were those below poverty line, an even more staggering number – those who barely made it over the line – are also incapable of securing for their daily basic needs. For India, as a Third World country, this is not surprising if only for the fact that the government lacks the resources to prop up its economy and is hindered in instituting policies that would help raise the people’s standard of living. The problem is complex involving social, cultural and political variables. For example, birth control in India is still frowned upon. Corruption is still rampant and its political institutions are still racked with instability. These variables, among others, require drastic and painful changes that are difficult to achieve in the Indian political landscape. Ultimately, a strong political will among its leaders should be the ultimate solution to the problem. The country could take lessons from other Asian countries that have made a dramatic turnaround. There is the case of South Korea, for example, which was also plagued with the same problems in the 1970s and 1980s (Heo & Roehrig, 2010, 35). A succession of strong governments that instituted reforms was able to address the problems that prevented its economy from finally taking off. India has a considerable population and its experience may be a little different. The reforms could be more difficult to achieve and that results may be gradual, but all these depend on the political leadership, which has the capability to see them through. Finally, it is also important to emphasize the need for a better classification of poverty levels. There is a tendency to focus on the poverty line; that the critical level is the one below the demarcation. Governments tend to emphasize this to sugarcoat its own economic performance. The less the segment classified as poor, the better it is able to trumpet economic development, which is an excellent political propaganda material. Politicians in power could fall into this trap and help further aggravate the situation because this, of course, contributes to inappropriate response. It leads everyone to a false sense of development, eliminating an opportunity to institute meaningful policies and target those people who are in dire need of help. India’s human development indicators reveal that those living just above the poverty level are also at risk. It is also quite probable that the line would be blurred as people belonging to this segment could slip up and down in poverty levels. There is, however, an underlying variable in the poverty issue. When the poverty level is determined, the criteria must include those that are appropriate in the case of India. To put it another way, one should not forget to view poverty in the context of the Indian experience. Western observers might view the issue from their perspective but it could lead to a miscalculation. For instance, the World Bank follows a standard based on the one dollar per day measure or the PPP-based international poverty line considers the aggregate poverty across countries wherein people with the same command over purchase of goods and services are treated the same regardless of where they live (World Bank, 2003, 5). Using a generalized standard could be misleading. A dollar in India could last a long way or could purchase more than in wealthier countries where the cost of living is higher. The case is that a person who subsists on a dollar per day in the US is a lot poorer than a person who lives on a dollar per day basis in India. The poverty problem is a complex challenge for the Indian government. This is highlighted by the fact that poverty could not be alleviated within a generation alone (Bane, 2009, 234). For a country like India, with its enormous population, the task is gargantuan. Improving the economy and ensuring that the development trickled all the way down to the poor entail not just assurance of employment and improved the earning prospects of the poor. It also include other objectives such as better access to education, better work opportunities for the less educated workforce, better access to health services, and the elimination of discrimination, among others. These should collectively constitute economic policies and India’s anti-poverty initiatives. Myth #2: Food is the biggest unmet need of Indias poor. Hunger remains a daily fact of life for the poorest of the poor. But health care, drinking water, and sanitation constitute 40 percent of the populations unmet needs by value. Indias national debate on poverty tends to focus on calorie sufficiency rather than these critical services. On average, Indians lack access to over half the health care infrastructure and services they need. The emphasis on food more than other critical basic needs in India’s poverty debate might be difficult to comprehend for people from affluent countries. Health and sanitation should indeed be treated a priority as much as the provision of food in every table. But this is India and food is the most immediate of the people’s basic needs. It is understandable to see how government and its institutions are not in the position to address all these poverty-entailed problems at once. At least, they cannot be addressed altogether without compromising the ability to ensure the efficacy of one policy or strategy. Even governments in first world economies are forced to redirect resources from healthcare when growth is stagnant and this is especially critical for India as low income country, with its government constituting the bulk of support for healthcare services (Macdonald, 101). The problem about calorie sufficiency, for instance, could not be properly addressed if the government is devoting an equal amount of time, effort and resources on other problems. This is usually the case for Third World countries. Government expenditures for this group on health seldom exceed 2 percent of the gross national product with the World Bank reporting in a study that government health outlays are less than one dollar per capita (El-Mehairy, 1984, 13). There is also the case of India’s debt. Financial institutions such as the IMF provide debt reliefs to countries like India on condition that they have a say on how the government would manage its economy (Arnold, 31). Payment for debts also meant that India have to sacrifice some of its initiatives such as healthcare services to the poor in order to pay for its loan obligations. According to Arnold, heavily indebted countries like India are standing still rather than developing because of their debt burdens, which could incur as much as 17 percent (30). The above factors are further aggravated by the fact that the tide of public opinion is focused on food sufficiency and policies that tend to deviate from this goal would be unpopular and could spell doom for the country’s political leaders. On account of this, a long historical policymaking is present in India with respect to food security. There are the cases of the Green Revolution, the storage and market interventions called Food Procurement and the establishment of public distribution system to deliver food to vulnerable sections of the Indian population (Nayak, p. 71). The succession of administrations of the Indian government could only look back to the political crises and the political costs during the 1970s and the 1980s that resulted from chronic food shortage (Mitra, 2012, 141). There might also be some social or cultural underpinnings to this issue. Indians might view health care with less entitlement, perceiving it as less of the government’s responsibility. Consider that people do not get sick everyday and that a number of illnesses result from the lifestyle of a person. Indians might view health care as a personal problem or, at least, more of his problem that the government’s. People also have varying ways to deal with the problem. It is not uncommon for Indians, for example, to resort to traditional medicine. This further convoluted by the fact that Indian health culture could vary according to lifestyles of the countries communities. According to Basavanthappa (2008), the health culture is often attuned to the overall ways of life: the more organized and sophisticated the way of life is, the more developed its health culture was and vice versa (44). Unfortunately, there are many communities that are still mired in indigenous systems of medicine (Basavanthappa, 43). The case of sanitation is, of course, also critical. But again this is not a problem unique to the Indian experience. Third World countries must grapple with the same challenge including its ramifications on public health. To support this, one could turn to a report by the World Health Organization estimating 7-80 percent of Third World hospital beds are occupied by patients with waterborne diseases (Kasarda & Parnell, 1992, 168). Although, unfortunate, it makes sense to claim that the problem about sanitation could only be addressed as the economy of a country got better as opposed to a redirection of current resources for a low income country. The poverty debate in India and the focus on food as opposed to the supposed equal attention given to health and sanitation is not a matter of choice but of necessity. People are more in danger of dying from hunger than from disease. Naturally, food would take precedence over the rest. Additionally, there is the fact that people are more inclined to grumble and be restive with empty stomachs than when they are bedridden with disease. That is why it is a political issue. The polity uses it as an election campaign platform, as a basis for rabble rousing and political attacks. It makes sense therefore that it dominates the national consciousness, fed by the social and political institutions to the point that it effectively eclipses other equally pressing but less popular issues. All in all, food security is the most important issue for a low income country like India. It is the most basic and, certainly, the most important both for the public and the policymakers. If other issues and problems take the back seat, this is not by choice. In this area, the government’s hands are tied, so to speak. Myth #3: Rising incomes are the key to a better quality of life. This observation is true -- but only up to a point. With higher incomes and purchasing power, people can afford better housing, sanitation, drinking water, and fuel for cooking and lighting. But the ability to spend is only one side of the equation. The poor also depend on community-level infrastructure such as schools and health-care networks. On average, Indians lack access to 46 percent of basic services, and that number soars up to 59 percent for the most deprived districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. To say that rising income is an indicator improving quality of life makes sense but it is only a dimension to it that to say that it exclusively translates to high quality of life would be grossly erroneous. There are diverse definitions to “quality of life” or that quality which is considered ideal. One could use the concepts proposed by Larsen and Lubkin to holistically explain what it is all about. First, they explained that it is not merely concerned with economic condition but also of living arrangement, community environment, culture, personal values, happiness, life satisfaction and spiritual well-being (140). To evaluate, hence, the quality of life - in order to determine whether it qualifies within the accepted global standard - one should look beyond wealth or income. To put this in context, one could use the case of a family living in Uttar Pradesh. Despite the fact that the family has a steady stream of income, they will not be able to secure a better healthcare once a member of the family becomes sick. In India, private doctors and specialists are more likely to locate in well-developed urban regions and that backward regions such as Uttar Pradesh must make do with basic health services provided by nongovernmental organizations (World Bank, 2005, 33). There is also the issue of diversity. Individuals have different needs when it comes to the satisfaction of the goodness of life. Vocational choice and circumstance could demonstrate this aspect. Williams and Murphy (1998) pointed out that vocational choices affect total life function as it drives individual behaviors, particularly in an individual’s willingness and satisfaction in approaching a task and in his or her work to achieve it to completion (132). The earning capacity is, therefore, just a variable in the overall happiness of an individual. Income could satisfy the individual up to a point. If he or she is not happy, the income as a reward will be meaningless. Now, vocational choice is severely hampered if the educational opportunities in the community or the location are limited. The same is true for other aspects in the people’s way of such as the quality of health care, infrastructure, environment and security. The key concept in the issue about quality of life is “holistic”. It involves several variables and dimensions because it involves the way of life for people and for the community. Unarguably, income is critical because it affects an individual’s capability to acquire goods and services that are crucial in leading an ideal lifestyle. However, this compromised if the very goods and services are not present despite the means for its acquisition. Certainly, it is challenging to achieve optimum quality of life for a country such as India across the bulk of its communities. There are diverse values, interests and needs that could result into differing perspectives about what constitutes a good life. What is important, however, is the recognition that quality of life is not dependent on rising income or wealth accumulation alone. This smacks of one-dimensional solution to this dilemma. Such recognition would mean a better understanding to the problem and the possibility of coming up with a multi-dimensional approach to initiatives, leading to more meaningful and, therefore, effective changes. Specifically, the government should be able to focus not just on job generation but also on other reforms and programs that guarantee better well-being for its citizens. Myth #4: Rising welfare budgets were the most important factor in past poverty reduction. India has been committing more resources to social welfare. Public spending for basic services rose by some 11 percent per year in real terms from 2005 to 2012, eventually reaching $118 billion. But about half of this spending did not translate into real benefits for the poor due to waste, corruption, or simple ineffectiveness. Rising government spending did drive about one-fourth of poverty reduction from 2005 to 2012, but jobs and rising incomes accounted for most of the progress that was achieved. Through the years, India has instituted reforms to address pressing problems such as food security, health care and social welfare. Many of these ended in failure not because of the initiatives are faulty in themselves. Rather, they were undermined by inefficiencies throughout their implementation. Most importantly, one could blame India’s huge bureaucracy and the culture of corruption that is deeply embedded in it. One is reminded of what Ventkatachalam wrote in 1998: Whether it is processing a license application through some government department, checking on a bank loan, getting treatment at a state-run hospital, being admitted to college or simply buying a ticket on a railway, money paid or favours promised are accepted as grease that makes India’s huge economic and social system work (72). Unfortunately the same circumstance is still true today. India is yet to make significant inroads in its drive to address corruption, red tape and various other bureaucratic problems that hinder the government’s ability to implement its anti-poverty and social reform initiatives. In 2012, India ranked ninety-fourth least corrupt country out of the 180 nations listed and that corruption is already a social phenomenon as it is widespread, institutionalized and is still growing at great rate (Chandler, 2014, 218). The case reached the point that corruption and the slow grinding of India’s bureaucracy has become a given, with a disturbing mantle of legitimacy. Bribery, misuse of funds, under-the-table payments, these are already considered normal in the operations of the government. They prevent programs from being successfully implemented. Chandler noted that corruption takes place “in collusion with the bureaucracy in the shape of huge kickbacks in big national and international deals which go undetected and unpunished” (218). The only way address the dilemma – of ensuring poverty reduction and social welfare initiatives are successfully implemented – is to eradicate corruption. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as it sounds. The dynamics of corruption in the country as well as its impact, particularly its link to the deterioration of the administrative system, has never attracted interest in India. The solution is, of course, the same for other countries that have the same experience. Greater transparency is called for. This is supported by several studies that have revealed that corruption is highest in less transparent countries (Porta & Vanucci, 2013, 10). For this purpose, one could begin dismantling policies that help to institutionalize a culture that helps corruption persist. For instance, there is the Official Secret Act that allows the government, most especially the executive department, in doing as they please without risk of exposure (Sanyal, 2001, 197). Strong political will from Indian leaders to institute bureaucratic reform and enforce accountability is also an imperative. This area is quite problematic because it is close to non-existent. Inefficient, corrupt, negligent and non-performing government officials can always get away because the system does not have a mechanism of punishment. “Dismissal from service,” wrote Alexander, “is very rare” and that instead of disciplinary measures, errant officials are merely issued memos (917). There is, hence, a need for a more stringent and severe penalty in order to deter wrongdoings. It is, of course, difficult to eradicate corruption altogether. There are academics who see it as a stage in the logical development of democratic countries in addition to the fact that all other countries have varying degrees of this problem (Bishop, 2000, 124). The most important issue, however, is how to manage and address it so that critical reforms are not jeopardized. Perhaps, the ineffectual measures to solve corruption could be partly attributed to public indifference. As previously mentioned, corrupt acts, bribery and kick-backs are no longer frowned upon in India and almost accepted as a normal government activity. This must change. There is a need for the public to understand that they are the victims here. Their taxes are wasted on the lack of welfare services and governmental programs that should have improved the quality of their lives. As a democratic country, the achievement of transparency and accountability for India is very much possible. There are social and political institutions such as the NGOs and the media that could help realize this goal. The public is an important component to this end. These stakeholders, working together, could help direct public discourse and influence or pressure policymakers towards addressing critical issues such as poverty alleviation and corruption. This has been shown to work in India in the past. The government, for instance, has been scrambling to produce a working food security policy because of intense public interest. Bibliography Alexander, P. Policing India in the New Millennium. Chennai: Allied Publishers, 2002. Arnold, Guy. The Resources of the Third World. London: Routledge, 2014. Bane, Mary. Poverty and Poverty Alleviation Strategies in North America. Harvard University Press, 2009. Basavanthappa. Community Health Nursing. New Delhi: Jaypee Brothers Publishers, 2008. Bishop, John. Ethics and Capitalism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Chandler, J.A. Comparative Public Administration. London: Routledge, 2014. Della Porta, Donatella and Vannucci, Alberto. The Hidden Order of Corruption: An Institutional Approach. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2013. El-Mehairy, Theresa. Medical Doctors: A Study of Role Concept and Job Satisfaction: The Egyptian Case. Leiden: Brill Archive, 1984. Heo, Uk and Roehrig, Terence. South Korea since 1980. 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