liberalisation has lessened social inequalities
The World Bank's recent report on inequality in South Asia, which concludes that Indians have as much of a chance of getting out of poverty as their counterparts in the US, demolishes the conventional leftist argument that economic liberalisation has only made the rich richer while the poor have become poorer.
The report shows that between 2004-2005 and 2009-2010, a whopping 40 per cent of the country's poor (about 15 per cent of the total population) moved above the poverty line, and over 11 per cent of the poor (about nine per cent of the total population) moved into the middle class. The report also looked at tribal and lower caste communities as well as religious minorities — groups that supposedly experience less social mobility than others — and found that poverty rates in these households also dropped during the five year period.
Similarly, the study also found that the rate of upward mobility in younger Muslims compared favourably to other religious groups, thereby challenging another ‘truism' that poor Muslims have been left out of India's growth story. India's social mobility figures were also impressive compared to others. The Gini coefficient, a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income distribution of a population, which is the most commonly used measure of inequality, was in fact better for this country than it was for the US, China, Russia and Brazil.
What this means is that the Indian version of the American Dream is coming true. A fast growing India is now able to generate the jobs and the opportunities necessary for its people to make a better living. Equally importantly, the circumstances of one's birth, be it their parents' financial status or their family name, will matter lesser and lesser in determining one's own standard of living. We know that this has been the case for the middle class but what the World Bank report highlights is that the upward mobility trend also holds true for the poorest, more marginalised sections of the population as well.
In fact, India's foremost Dalit scholar Chandrabhan Prasad made much the same point four years ago when he studied the impact of economic liberalisation on more than 19,000 Dalit households in Uttar Pradesh. Mr Prasad found that there had been dramatic change in their standards of living; and encapsulated his observations in one simple but brilliant example — that of the pizza delivery boy.
Apart from the obvious references to open markets, multi-national corporations, globalisation and blue collared urban jobs that are most commonly taken up by younger folks coming from outside the city, the unique element here is that when the pizza is delivered, no one ever asks the delivery boy his caste (or religion, for that matter), even though, not so long ago, orthodox high caste Hindus would never have accepted food from the lower castes.
That this example is a routine and entirely unremarkable occurrence across the country today is, in fact, what makes the story behind it so powerful. It is also why India must support Prime Minister Narendra Modi's single-minded focus on economic growth because this is the only way that the country can lift its millions out of poverty and afford them the opportunities for a better life.