Dilip vs yazad jal

Country on Parade
April 15, 2005
The overwhelming impression? Poverty. Two recent 24 hour journeys in second-class compartments on trains, and I came home stunned -- I mean this, I was simply stunned -- at the number and variety of people who streamed through the coach asking for coins. Or who did so from the stations we stopped at. Or who were obviously destitute and desperate even if they did not beg.Eunuchs; blind men; blind couples; men on their behinds with a leg draped around their necks, one with a bag of grapes hanging from his toes; young kids doing some little act; young girls singing tunelessly; boys and men and women sweeping the compartment, some with the shirts off their backs; filthy mothers with a seemingly lifeless kid lolling in their arms; a bearded midget who didn't say a word; men without one or more limbs; men on crutches; a young man who picked up discarded watermelon rinds from under the train and chewed on them; a smiling old man who switched from Tamil to English to Tamil again, asking for money all the while; assorted others. From early in the morning, all through the day, well into the night. On and on.I've travelled second-class for over 35 years now: short journeys, long ones, in every part of the country. For the sense it gives you of what India is about, it is indisputably the best way to travel. It occurred to me that on none of those journeys, over all those years, did I see so many beggars, so much poverty. All of which, like always, gave me a sense of what my country is about, circa 2005.Yes, this is 2005. We are a decade-and-a-half into reforms and liberalisation and the tearing down of socialism that, we have been told, is addressing India's gargantuan problem of poverty in the most efficient way possible. The proponents of this great exercise will quote arguments and figures at length to make that case, to persuade us that poverty is on the wane. And if you look at their figures, you will indeed be persuaded. Figures are like that.But then I do this second-class journey, and I am left with fumbling, groping questions: Why can't I see it, this dramatic decrease in poverty that's supposed to be chugging along so nicely? Why, in all the years that I've noticed and been aware of realities in my country, have I not felt there is a perceptible drop in the number of poor people? And on this one journey, why do I see more beggars -- many more -- than I ever have on such a trip?Anecdotal evidence, those proponents will say, supercilious smile spreading on their faces because they believe they know better. Anecdotal evidence doesn't count. You have to look at the numbers. If you do, you will understand what we've been saying: the move to free markets is bringing more people out of poverty faster than anything else ever has, at any time in our history. In fact, it's a proven fact that free markets are the only mechanism there is to truly address poverty.So just give it some time.Oh yes, time. After all, who would expect an end to widespread poverty overnight? It must and will take time.Then again, the reforms have been in place nearly 15 years. That's over a third of the time from 1947 till liberalisation began. By any standards, that hardly qualifies as "overnight" any more. By any standards, after 15 years during which droves of people escaped from being poor, I should see around me some perceptible decrease in poverty. On this trip, I didn't.Look at it this way: let's say I've been piling our household trash outside my front door for a year. Let's say I've steadily ignored my wife's pleas to clean the godawful mess that's now built up there. Until today, when I finally tell her I'm going to clean up. It's a huge job, but I do get started on it. Every day, I show my wife figures of the number of truckloads of dirt I've carted off from our door to the city dump.Four months from now -- one-third of the year that I dumped garbage uncaringly at our front door -- would she be entitled to expect that the rubbish pile has visibly diminished?And if she doesn't see this -- if she instead sees it looming just as large, perhaps even larger -- would she be entitled to think, this husband of mine is doing something wrong. If he's doing anything at all. What's more, would it make sense for me to smile superciliously at her worries and whip out my figures again? Tell her that her fears about the non-decreasing pile amount to just so much anecdotal evidence, and that doesn't count?Absurd, of course. By themselves, figures mean nothing. The anecdotal evidence gives them heft and credibility.Again, look at it this way: If I never had seen Indians defecating on the tracks, on the rocks at low tide, by the side of the road -- yes, if I never had seen such sights, it would be difficult to believe the troubling statistic that nearly seven of every 10 Indians lack access to reasonable sanitation. But I have seen them. That's why I have a sense that the figure is likely to be true. What's more, it's the only way I have of judging the truth in the figure.In much the same way, our encounters with poor Indians are the anecdotal evidence that allows us to judge the truth about levels of poverty; about claims that those levels have decreased. What's more, they are the only way we have to judge those claims. There's no doubt in my mind: reforms must happen. But 15 years after the process began, I can't help feeling that something is wrong about the way we are pursuing them. For I am yet to see the one effect they must have, first and above all: a visible lessening in the level of Indian poverty. Fewer poor Indians around us. I can't see that.This train journey, in which Indian poverty streamed past me as if we were t some surreal alternate Republic Day parade, showed me as much.

VS

Poverty, footwear and cold water
May 02, 2005
Dilip D'Souza has been 'overwhelmed' by the poverty he saw during some of his recent train trips. And he's not persuaded by 'figures' pointing otherwise, especially those that compare India's poverty before and after liberalisation.
Let me see if I can persuade Dilip (and other readers) without using numbers as crutches. His observations make for interesting anecdotal evidence and I won't counter that. Instead I would add my own observations.
When I was a boy, seeing people walk about barefoot was common. I remember asking my mother's aunt (who used to help take care of me) "Why don't these people wear shoes or slippers?" and she'd shush me up, a bit embarrassed.
Today as I walk down the same roads of my childhood (my current office is located on a road parallel to where my grandaunt lived), I have to strain to see someone barefoot. I actually took a walk yesterday around those lanes of Grant Road just to check that out and I could not find even a single barefooted person.
Even the poorest labourers at a construction site wore rubber Hawaii chappals. This is not true just in Bombay. I've observed it during my trips to Pune, Bangalore, Delhi, Kolkatta, and across Madhya Pradesh. Even the poorest have some sort of footwear. Being barefoot was common twenty years back. It's not any longer. People can afford slippers, fancy sandals and shoes. Shoes! Look around. You'd see more people decently shod today than at any other time in the past that I remember.
I also see many more poor people using public transport. Twenty years back our maids would walk two kilometres. Today they catch the bus. What about education? Twenty years back our maids would beg us to find a maid's job for her daughters. Today she asks us to look for cheap coaching classes. These may be small indicators, but they matter as much as seeing beggars in trains.
Perhaps the most shocking insight I got was during a survey in Delhi's slums three years ago. A colleague and I had just finished an hour-long interview in the horrendous summer heat of Delhi. The slum dweller asked us if we would like something to drink. My thirst overcame my wariness of the water quality and I said yes. Pat came the reply "thanda pani peeogey?" (Will you have some cold water?) Cold water? In the middle of a large slum?
Well, the next room had a nice fridge. And as we explored around, the slum (where the poor stay) was decently equipped. A few fridges, many televisions, and even a few coolers! I doubt you would have found these appliances in 1980.
Wait, that wasn't the most shocking insight. Seeing my bannerwallah sport a cell phone was. This was the guy who painted banners for the seminars I organised. Lived on the road and at a time when incoming calls were not free, he needed a cell phone to stay in touch with his customers (like me). This was five years back. Today, it's difficult to travel in a train or bus without hearing a cell phone ring every five minutes.
It seems everyone has one. Not just the middle class. The taxi drivers have them. Fishermen use them. Security guards who earn less than Rs 3,000 per month have them. We've had cell phones in India for around ten years only (started in September 1995). At that time, it was looked upon as be an expensive toy made for the rich to indulge it, one more luxury. Just a decade later, there are more cell phones than land lines in India.
So how have so many poor people got themselves the money for shoes, transport, private education, fridges, television, coolers and cell phones? Maybe those figures have some answers after all. They're worth a brief look. India's GDP per capita in 1990, before liberalisation, was $1,300. Today it's $2,830, more than double. It's increased at around 5.33 per cent per year.
For the sceptics, a small factoid: a growth rate of just 7.2 per cent per year will double incomes in ten years. (These are purchasing power parity
Of course figures don't tell the whole story, there are many poor people in India. However, the numbers have lessened, both in absolute as well as percentage terms. Not lessened to the extent that would make either Dilip or me happy though. There is still more poverty than what I care to see.
My perspective is unabashedly middle class, and I'd like to see more people leaving poverty and getting into the large middle class morass. The best way of doing so, is to let people be. That means getting the government out of our lives as much as possible. One reason Dilip and others see liberalisation not having any effect on poverty is that the occupations of the poor have not really been liberalised. How easy is it to run a small shop or practice a small trade? On the streets of India's cities, that's amongst the most difficult things to do. True liberalisation is making life easier for the poorest of the poor -- by getting out of the way. Leaving them free to do what they want (as long as they don't impinge on the freedom of others). That's what a free economy, nay, what freedom itself is all about.