Disparities in India

Written at University of California Santa Barbara
Prof. Ahuja
Political Science 106IE
Disparities in India
India became a democratic state in 1947 after gaining independence from British rule. From its inception, many factors such as underdevelopment, social hierarchy, illiteracy, and rampant corruption have impeded it on its goal to becoming a part of the global north. The purpose of this paper is to determine the success of the Indian democracy in alleviating poverty and providing basic services to the poor. To determine the success rate of the republic, I will analyze the initial state building process that was carried out by the Nehru administration and later by his daughter Indira Gandhi, education, agricultural reform, and the status of the caste system. In doing so, I plan to show that the Indian democratic process has not been very successful in uplifting the impoverished population or in alleviating the many causes of poverty.
At the time of independence India was a fairly poor country by all measures. The literacy rate at the time was only 16 percent for the population of 320 million, life expectancy was just thirty-two years, and almost 90 percent of the population lived in rural areas and survived mostly through agriculture (Luce 463). This was a state that needed to build from the ground up. Yet the Nehru administration took a very different approach to nation building by starting at the top. By the time the first government was established, there was “consensus in which the country would aim for complete economic self-sufficiency and the state would lead the effort by building up heavy industry, [like]… steel plants and large dams” (Luce 461). The dilemma here was not easily visible at the time and the policies went largely unquestioned. Nehru of course was seen as a well educated statesman who alongside Mahatma Gandhi led the independence movement and suffered immensely at the hands of the British. Yet his vision of a self-sufficient industrialized India would fall short. The idea of a self-sufficient or “swadeshi” India stemmed from the distrust for a free-trade capitalist economy. This was largely due to the global economic downturn that followed the Great Depression in the US; Nehru therefore opted for a state led vitalization based loosely on the efforts of the Tennessee Valley Authority (Luce 462). Some very isolationist minded policies were adopted in order to keep foreign economic influences out of India, for example regulations on FDIs. The vision of steel mills, aluminum plants, massive dams, and higher education was still quite out of the reach for a country just starting out. However, in the process of nation building, Nehru’s policies overlooked the fact that 84 percent of the population could not sign his or her name and yet five elite engineering universities were established by the government in order to help create a skilled labor force (Luce 463). The scarce capital resources that should have gone towards the establishment of programs to provide education at the primary and elementary levels went to sectors where their impact was minimized. Thus the poor in the rural areas went without a basic factor necessary for the nation to rise. Today India’s adult literacy rate is about 63 percent where as South Korea, which started the democratization process around the same time, is about 98 percent (Luce 463). Another major factor that stemmed India’s growth was the lack of land reform. At its independence India was in great need of land reform due to food shortages, but the initial five year plan presented to Parliament in 1951 allocated only about a third of spending on agriculture and in the second five year plan spending dropped to a fifth (Luce 464). Again the rural areas went overlooked and majority of the funds went towards urban development. There was still no major outcry from the people because most of the uneducated masses, to some extent, were essentially used to living in such conditions. Without the infrastructure necessary to sustain the food supply for the growing population the need to import became ever greater. The major failure of the swadeshi policy came around in 1967 following a long run of poor harvests that forced Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter and Prime Minister at the time, to devalue the currency in exchange for increased aid from the US; the aim of devaluing was to stimulate the export sector of the economy but the policy did not work due the increased need to import to sustain the heavy industry (Luce 465). The increase in the amount of aid going to India sufficiently ended the idea of self-sufficiency.
In 1991, the second major failure of the Nehru policy occurred in the form of an economic collapse. Due to the Gulf War, the price of oil rose sharply and since India was still not a major trader on the world market, its foreign exchange reserves were almost depleted and it had to devalue its currency again in order to borrow from the IMF to balance payments (Luce 466). The agricultural sector however survived due to the green revolution that was initiated by Indira. The Green Revolution gave India a sufficient food supply of its own by incorporating more modern farming methods and using high crops of rice and wheat (Luce 466). Nehru’s focus on the urban rather than rural is also a major cause for India’s lag in catching up with other emerging Asian countries such as China, South Korea, or Taiwan; all of whom, though starting out around the same time, have far greater per capita incomes. The next major aspect that must be broken down to understand the cause of poverty is the caste system.
For thousands of years, this system for a heterogeneous society has been in place according to the many occupational positions people dwelt in. For example, in western culture it was deemed at one point that the son of a blacksmith would in turn become a blacksmith. The idea that a son would follow in the footsteps of the father was very prevalent and in parts of the world still is. Yet, other than the socio-economic barriers, there were no cultural hurdles stopping the son of a blacksmith from becoming say a teacher. In the Indian caste system, however, the difficulty comes from ones name and lineage which are established at birth. The caste system is broken down essentially into five groups: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Shudras, and those outside the caste system are referred to as Untouchables or Dalits (Luce 270). All of India’s Hindu population is divided into these groups and then divided into hundreds of sub-castes. I myself am a Vaishya and part of the sub-caste of Bania. This essentially implies that I am from a merchant/trader background. The caste system confined people to their sector of occupation which was extremely hard to escape. As the ancient laws of Manu state, “It is better to do one’s own duty badly than another man’s well” (Luce 271). Due this “preordained” placement in society, most of the population consisting of the lower castes has been subjected to poverty. This ideology was and still is one of the major hurdles for the Indian government’s efforts to reduce poverty. Fast forward to the 21st century and we see the results of policies enacted in order to bridge the social gaps.
Some of the very first efforts can be seen in the writing of the constitution. Mahatma Gandhi appointed BR Ambedkar, an untouchable yet British educated lawyer, for the task of framing the constitution (Lecture 1/11). This was done not only as a political move to garner support for the independence movement from the poor, accounting for mass majority of the population, but for Gandhi’s vision to build a more egalitarian society. In the initial provisions provided by the constitution, we see one aspect that is paramount to any democracy, universal franchise (Lecture 1/20). From the get go, the Indian constitution provided equal rights to all, equal opportunity, and made discrimination based on gender, race, or ethnic background illegal. In conjunction with the constitution, the Indian government over the years has implemented what has now come to be known as the largest affirmative action or reservation program in the world.
The affirmative action program in India applies only to the public sector at the moment; it reserves close to 50 percent of India’s public sector jobs for essentially three groups: Adivasis (tribal Indians making up 10 percent of the population), Dalits (untouchables making up 12.5 percent of population), and the OBCs (Other Backward Castes at 27 percent) (Luce 290). The effects of these reservation policies can be prevalently seen in the political spectrum. One example is Lalu Parshad Yadav, part of the OBC, who has been an on and off member of Parliament for almost 40 years and he served as the Minister of Railways for 5 years; other prominent figures include Mayawati, Chief Minister of Utter Pradesh, who is seen as a future candidate for Prime Minister and Mulayam Yadav, the former Chief Minister of UP (Luce 291-2). A major part of the success of schedule caste parties can also be attributed to the fact that, as I stated earlier, almost 50 percent of the population belongs to Scheduled or other OBCs and as we heard from Professor Ahuja, in India people on the lower end of the socio-economic ladder tend to have much higher rates of political participation in terms of voting (1/27). All of these efforts listed above seemingly point towards a more positive society, but there are some downsides to it as well.
I have personally met Lalu Prashad Yadav, though it is true that he is a prominent politician in India, he is also one of the most corrupt. The same can be said for Mayawati. Neither of these politicians who garner immense amounts of support has ever in their political careers put forward a plan for economic reform, foreign policy, or defense (Luce 293). If the election of such politicians is supposed to be beneficial to the nation then there should some tangible foreseeable benefits such as schools, hospitals, infrastructure, etc. yet they are nowhere. In a raid by the Central Bureau of Investigation of Mayawati’s home in 2003, over $3.2 million worth of undeclared assets were found (Rediff). Yet she still has her job as Chief Minister and the people will most likely vote for her again simply because of the fact that she is from the same caste. Though she may not provide any social reform to the lives of her constituents, the idea that one of their own is in a place of power gives great incentive to vote because Mayawati’s political objective, other than making money thorough corrupt means, is greater affirmative action and reservation of more jobs for the Scheduled castes in not only the public sector but also in the private. These reservation programs have helped many people from the Dalit society secure jobs, but at the same time it has created greater discrimination. Due to mandatory reservations, many unqualified workers are hired in position that they do not have the skills to carry out, therefore creating greater insecurity by employers in terms hiring people from the Scheduled castes and deepening the tensions within the caste system itself.
Corruption is one of the major factors holding up progress in India today. In the state of Utter Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party, Mayawati’s party, has been accused of “selling electoral tickets to the highest bidder, accepting bribes from civil servants to be moved to more comfortable postings, handing our industrial licenses in exchange for favors, and fixing supposedly blind lotteries to allocate prime urban land to friends” (Luce 299). The most alarming factor in this situation is not the corruption itself, but the fact that the people who vote for such politicians are fully aware of it. Political office is a tool to serve the public, but in the case of India it is giving some a chance to get back at the upper castes. During the first year of her administration, Mayawati ordered 1400 transfers of upper-caste IAS officers because, as one of her advisors said, “Mayawati likes to keep the Brahmins dancing” (Luce 292). Rampant corruption such as this makes life especially difficult for the poor because it breeds an atmosphere of dishonesty therefore furthering the problem instead of solving it. The reforms thus far that have been taken up to help and uplift the lower castes have to some extent backfired.
The lower castes and especially people living below the poverty line, irrespective of caste, need essentials for survival, not political reservations. India still does not have any laws against child labor or compulsory education; many children belonging to such families stay at home to take care of siblings, work in farms, or find employment elsewhere to supplement family income (Weiner 499). The major argument that follows from this is that if the people were not living in the grips of poverty they would be much more likely to send their children to school. If the parents were able to support a household on the basis of their own income, there would be no need for child labor. Though the government provides cheap education to impoverished families in parts of the country, the effectiveness of it is quite dismal due to much of funds falling through the cracks (corruption) or teachers on the payroll simply not showing up to teach (Lecture 2/17). Another issue with the public education is that it simply does properly prepare children for anything more than the most remedial of jobs, thus giving credibility to the argument that children should enter the workforce at an early age in order to acquire skills for manual labor that can be learned in a job and not in school. In fact to have any real chance of advancing their children’s education, parents have to send them to private schools which are not cheap. The fact that most of the people who actually face the dilemma of whether to send their kids to public or private school often have other worries as well like food and that puts education on backburner.
To further the problem, many of these schools work on the principles of patronage for admission, in other words bribes. There are always a very limited number of seats available in these institutions and in order to secure them one must either have money or the brain capacity of Stephen Hawking. Since the exact same principle patronage is what the government, its institutions, and bureaucracies operate on, the issue is over looked. The initial policies of Nehru in regards to educations are prevalent even today. This fact is quite evident considering 37 percent of the population is still illiterate. Indian policy makers do not see education for lower castes as a necessity for modernization, instead resources are pumped into “elite government schools, state-aided private schools, and higher education in order to create an educated class that is equal to educated classes in the west and that is capable of creating and managing a modern enclave economy” (Weiner 501). Such policies do not help in the development of the country they are simply deepening the gap between the haves and have-nots. Even if we look at a very simple and essential necessity like food, we see the gaps between policy and implementation. India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world and it also boasts one of the highest child malnutrition rates in the world. In 2009, 48 percent of children under the age of five were categorized as being malnourished (The Economist 457). The green revolution made India able to feed itself, but it did not account for a massive surge in the population which is still rising though at a much slower rate. This can partly be attributed to the fact that 260 million people in India survive on less than a dollar a day and the aging technology and infrastructure of the Indian agricultural system (The Economist 457).
The problems to improvement in India stem from the historical blunders in the first administration’s policy making process. In the sector of education, the policies of Nehru left the majority of the marginalized population uneducated. Essential resources that at the time that should have been allocated towards the agricultural sector to prop up the rural parts of the country were squandered on industrial ambitions that bore little or no fruit. This in turn has caused the Indian economy to be quite lopsided in the 21st century. The majority of the GDP coming from the service sector and not agriculture or industrial, a phenomenon which is the complete opposite of every other industrialized state which went in the order of agriculture, industry, and lastly service. Education policies that have concentrated mainly on the high-middle to upper class of society over the past 60 years have created a well educated workforce able to enter the service sector. On the other end of the socio-economic ladder, such policies have neglected the lower classes and have left a great portion of the population uneducated. Compared to its economic rivals in the region, India is greatly losing with a literacy rate of 63 percent whereas its rivals are well over 90 percent. The Indian government has been successful in providing the people with the necessary tools to effectively influence political change, but it has not provided the knowledge necessary to employ those tools. The policy of job reservations in the public sector has created counter discrimination towards actual qualified workers. Steps taken to stop caste discrimination have to some extent worked, but have also instigated further political corruption. At one end of the scale we have children that die of malnutrition on the other we have dishonest politicians that have millions in undeclared assets. To sum it all up, though India has been quite successful on the global economic and military scale, due to flawed policy choices and rampant corruption, it has failed in delivering basic services and alleviating poverty.

Works Cited:
Ahuja, Amit. Course Lecture Notes. Political Science 106IE. UCSB, CA.1/11-2/17.
"Evidence found against Maya: CBI." rediff, 8 Oct. 2003. Web. 23 Feb. 2011. <http://ia.rediff.com/news/2003/oct/08taj1.htm>.
"Light and Shade." Markets & Data. The Economist, 10 Aug. 2006. Web. 23 Feb. 2011.
Luce, Edward. In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Print.
Weiner, Myron. “The Argument.” The Child and the State in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1990.

Cited: Ahuja, Amit. Course Lecture Notes. Political Science 106IE. UCSB, CA.1/11-2/17. "Evidence found against Maya: CBI." rediff, 8 Oct. 2003. Web. 23 Feb. 2011. &lt;http://ia.rediff.com/news/2003/oct/08taj1.htm&gt;. "Light and Shade." Markets &amp; Data. The Economist, 10 Aug. 2006. Web. 23 Feb. 2011. Luce, Edward. In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Print. Weiner, Myron. “The Argument.” The Child and the State in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1990.