Of Course We Have, and Here’s to Much More

At least on Independence day, we can give ourselves the liberty of thinking about the past decade. And give ourselves a break from the flagellation to look at some of the useful things that got done in India. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, started in 2000-01, has been a success. Now, 90% of children have access to a school close to home, literacy rates in rural India have risen by 10% in the last decade and the literacy gap between urban and rural has narrowed. When you get cynical, drive into the interiors of most states and see droves of children chattering and laughing and on their way to school. The right to education has birth defects but it moves the agenda from mere access to a right to free education. The right to information is a noncaste-based liberal move, whose impact is widespread, and goes all the way to the […]

Rock-cut Realities

A visit to Ajanta Ellora leaves one overwhelmed for many reasons. Stressed out by recent happenings, I thought a retreat into the past would bring some calm and balm. That’s how last weekend found me at Ajanta Ellora. It wasn’t all calm and balm though. In fact it was overwhelming to see what people did thousands of years ago in supposed pre-modern times, and to see that Indians did have the ideas, the planning, the patience, the team work and the money to do things that were at the cutting-edge the world over. I felt wrung out each evening from the déjà vu that hits you hard at such places. The same gods, the same stories, Mahabharata on stone instead of on TV! I once saw lots of gold jewellery on display at the British Museum from the Oxus treasures, dating to the 4th and 5th century BC, and there […]

Coming out of the Water Closet

Women’s toilets are climbing the corporate ladder I am obsessed with office toilets. I thought that was something I should not talk about ever, but a recent opinion piece in a business newspaper has given me the courage to come out of the water closet. It was called “India needs a latrine policy”, written by a friend who has also authored a book on game theory. My obsession goes back three decades. After my course at IIM-A, during placements, many employers said they didn’t want women because of many reasons; one was that they didn’t have ladies toilets and would have to build them. Of course, she who must not be named (for fear of royalty payment being extracted), would say that the real reason for my obsession is that I never progressed beyond the anal stage of my personality. But as any working woman of my vintage will tell […]

Cross Connections

In the markets of touristy Jaisalmer, you find, not economic trickle-down, but the global culture trickling down Driving From Jodhpur to Jaisalmer through the stark empty road with open spaces on either side, and no visible economic activity for miles and miles, my husband asked in a worried tone, every 10 minutes, “How will trickle-down ever get here?” Until we got to Jaisalmer and saw the main street, which looked a lot better than Warden Road, Mumbai, where we live. All the hotels were lit up like the big buildings of Mumbai. Where we live. All the hotels were lit up like the big buildings of Mumbai on Maharashtra Day and Independence Day. So what’s the occasion, we asked our escort. No occasion, he replied. It’s must the tourist season. “But do you have enough electricity? Are there power cuts and inverters in my mother’s house in Hyderabad. None at […]

Invisible, Volatile Middle India

This deprived section, sandwiched between two pampered classes, needs attention and policy support In the decade after liberalisation, ‘invisible India’ referred to the poor, barely earning, mostly rural India, which many said had got lost as policymakers’ attention was focused on the so-called middle class, whose steeply-increasing consumption was very important for GDP growth. Also, it was this consumption juggernaut that would attract FDI and vibrant domestic investment, and cause trickle-down of aspiration and incomes, and create jobs down the income ladder. After that, when it was accepted that the trickle-down didn’t trickle all the way down, the spotlight shifted to the plight of the poor and ‘inclusive growth’ became the new mantra. The hitherto-invisible India became the target for a slew of welfare programmes, most prominent being the MGNREGA. Financial inclusion, being pushed hard by the banking regulator for a while now, is also aimed at this segment, and […]

Not so simple!

Why life is not all about yes and no in India During my market research days, I used to work on global surveys, where the same questions had to be asked across countries and the answers compared. Implicit in this was the assumption that as long as the questions were identical, the answers were comparable. However this was usually quite far from the truth, as all of us with common sense can well imagine. “Can’t say” in India was not “don’t know” as elsewhere, because it was often “won’t say”. “Are you vegetarian or not”, was not so simple because I could be vegetarian only at home or only on Tuesdays. A standard international price testing question was to ask people, “if the price of Brand B went up by Rs x, which brand would you switch to?” This data was then subjected to some rigorous maths to predict what […]

Piercing the Veil of Illusion

It is time to let social scientists take the floor to understand the many maladies afflicting India India has a deeply entrenched knowledge caste system. ‘Science’ is superior to ‘arts’, ‘quantitative’ better than ‘qualitative’; oncology and computer science will benefit the country more than sociology or psychology. Economics is superior to other ‘arts’ because it is quantitative. Consequently even the most pressing problems of national character and society and polity are sought to be solved by technofixes or higher GDP growth rate or understood by some set of quantitative indicators like vote shares or infrastructure outlay or poverty statistics using different measures. Seriously addressing such problems, however, requires rising above the caste system and getting social science disciplines to urgently work on them, or else they will rot the foundations of the country. We need them to urgently put into the public discourse a deep understanding of the real nature […]

The Winning Poll Platform

Needed A More Honest Vocabulary!

Are we getting trapped by our own spin doctoring? The television footage from Davos showed Indian leaders talking of the steady onward march of the Indian economy, with healthy investment and household consumption growth. Meanwhile back home, corporate bankers were privately foreseeing tough times ahead, because the ‘mood’ (spin word for confidence?) of Indian large corporates was not upbeat. Reasons given were the usual suspects of political and policy uncertainty, bad governance and corruption, food inflation, high interest rates etc. But FII analysts are beginning to ask some very hard questions indeed. One set of questions is around why Indian companies are choosing to invest overseas rather than in India; did they not believe in the India story? The politically correct – and truthful – answer is that India Inc. must have a global footprint too, and if this is a time offering an opportunity to do so, then why […]

Growth and Inequality

Inclusive growth is when more and more Indians benefit from the growth of the economy, by way of better incomes and a better quality of life. Has this happened so far? The answer is yes, it has happened to a certain extent, but has not happened enough. To say that there has been no “trickle down” at all to the common man, of the benefits of economic growth is belied by all available statistics of income and consumption. Practically, everyone is earning more today than they were the previous year or the year before that, or even the generation before that. Yes, those who were at the top half of the income ladder to begin with, have had their incomes grow much more than those who were in the bottom half. But the rising tide has lifted the average income of the bottom 25% of Indians also. But this unfortunately […]