Plan, the ChildrenÂ’s aid organization, issued a report with the following sobering statistics (Thanks, Al Mujahid):
- Nearly half of Asia’s 1.3bn children live in poverty, denied basic needs, says a new report.
- India has the largest number of poor children in Asia, with 80% of its 400m young severely deprived, it says.
- 600m Asian children under the age of 18 lack access to either food, safe drinking water, health or shelter.
- Of those, 350m were described as "absolutely poor", meaning they do not have access to two or more of a child’s essential necessities. [BBC]
Though Africa (especially lately) is the continent many of us associate with poverty and desperation, Asia has double the number of “severely deprived” children. I’m ashamed of my ignorance of this fact. It’s so easy to focus on Bangalore and Gurgaon, on starbucks-esque “third places”, on “desirable” India. I heard so much about India’s fabulous new middle class, I forgot that
Despite high growth rates in countries like India and China, millions of families were being left behind, according to the report.
Among the causes, the report said, were the pressure of rapid population growth on scarce resources, lack of access to education, health care, clean water or sanitation, caste discrimination, and weak governance and corruption.[BBC]
Around half of India’s children who are age five or younger are malnourished; additionally, India has more children working than any other country. Sixty percent of India’s youngest citizens are “absolutely poor”. In contrast, only 13 million or China’s 380 million children are considered “deprived”.
China, the report said, had made "great strides in poverty reduction in recent years".[BBC]
WhatÂ’s being done?
Child aid organisation, Plan, author of the report, has pledged to spend $1bn on poverty reduction in 12 Asian countries over the next decade.
It also wants rich nations to reduce subsidies given to their own farmers and to cancel Third World debt. [BBC]
Sigh.
back in the 1980s when i was a big fan of comparative atlases i would not that well, much of africa really isn’t that bad off compared to some of the south asian countries.
Asia has double the number of “severely deprived” children.
Asia, broadly construed, has 3 billion plus people depending on how you count. Sub-Saharan Africa has, 650 million people. The absolute values don’t reflect the facts on the ground.
Despite high growth rates in countries like India and China, millions of families were being left behind, according to the report.
Every single time I hear this, I feel like yelling. Obviously high growth rates are not going to make everyone rich overnight. But any kind of harebrained socialism is just going to slow down the wealth creation process.
WhatÂ’s being done?
Hopefully, nothing besides further liberalization of the economy. I mean, why don’t Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, or Singapore have a poverty problem? It’s not because they received a billion in foreign aid. That’s chump change when you’re talking about international affairs. The only solution for poverty is capitalism and self sufficiency. No country ever got rich off foreign aid…but foreign investment is another matter.
I guess the bottom line is that 95% of the people who bring up this kind of thing sneak in the notion that this poverty is because of capitalism, rather than being alleviated by capitalism at a greater rate than ever before. That BW quote is instructive:
http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_34/b3948528.htm
Indian government census statistics show the number of those living on less than $1 a day has dropped from 26% of the population in 1999 to an estimated 20% today.
6% in FIVE YEARS. That’s unheard of. Soon people are going to be complaining about obesity in South Asia…oh wait, some already are.
harebrained socialism
PS, Anna, that wasn’t directed at you (I can understand simply “feeling bad”) but rather at the people who’d ensure more deaths and starvation via advocating more regulation, more socialism, and more class warfare. India and China have had enough of that.
no worries, GC. i am a trembling, delicate little flower, but even i didn’t take offense at your comment. 😉
you’re right. it’s a general, helpless sort of “bad” that i feel.
The unforgiving gap between rich and poor is implicit here. At least it is suggested in your reference to the “fabulous middle class” etc.
While the effects of that reality are more pernicious than total in other parts of the world (380 million in China), suffering is no less harsh for those counted in statistically smaller groups.
“Despite high growth rates in countries like India and China, millions of families were being left behind, according to the report.”
“Every single time I hear this, I feel like yelling. Obviously high growth rates are not going to make everyone rich overnight. But any kind of harebrained socialism is just going to slow down the wealth creation process.”
Hi gc,
Should we also call government provided property rights that protect corporate earnings “harebrained socialism?”
Also, “wealth creation process” might sound to some like a euphemism for “profiteering” and “exploitation.”
There is, for instance, much “wealth creation” in the international manufacture, transfer, traffic, and use of arms. For some, the fiasco in Iraq is a miracle of “wealth creation”. For others (who are innocent), it is a horrific misery.
My point is that these inextricably complex situations don’t reduce to slogans of right or left like “wealth creation” or “harebrained socialism”.
More likely they are the result of the convergence of countless instances of the “strong doing what they will and the weak doing what they must”. A situation remarked on by an ancient (Thucydides) and probably endorsed by the magazine you cite (Business Week).
much “wealth creation” in the international manufacture, transfer, traffic, and use of arms.
Right, Chris — when GE opens up a new research laboratory in India, it’s just like the French arms sales to Saddam!
And thanks for reminding me that it was capitalists who were running suicide car bombs into groups of children going to school. Here I thought they were muttering Allahu Akbar and praising the prophet…but according to you, I misheard…they were really just after profit!
Yes, you got me. Brilliance, brilliance…capitalists invaded Iraq for the cheap oil, which is of course why oil prices are higher than ever. And Bush invaded Iraq so that he could funnel a few billion to Halliburton, when 100X that amount could easily be funneled to them in peacetime (if that were the objective).
The analytical tools of the Marxist left are as sharp as ever, I see…
My point is that these inextricably complex situations
I note that the “inextricable complexity” of it all doesn’t stop you from proposing a policy. Maybe that complexity isn’t so intractable after all.
the convergence of countless instances of the “strong doing what they will and the weak doing what they must”.
While we’re at it, riddle me this: why is North Korea poorer than South Korea, East Germany poorer than West Germany, the Chinese mainland poorer than Hong Kong, and India proper poorer than the Indian diaspora?
Furthermore, why is Continental Europe poorer (by the tune of about $5000 in real GDP-per-capita terms) than the UK, which is in turn about $5000 poorer than the US?
I am really curious about your explanation. Double bonus points for any mention of “yankee imperialism”.
Hi gc,
Did I cite the opening of a GE lab in India? Your association of obvious dissimilars here to undermine my point is disappointing.
Also, did I state that “capitalists invaded Iraq for the cheap oil” or espouse a reliance on the “analytical tools of the Marxist left”? (Can you tell me what those tools are?)
If you have had the privilege of speaking to people who are either Iraqi, or in the United States Military, you might obtain a more nuanced view of the situation there. (My daughter is in the military by the way. It was her – energetically made -choice.)
I have no wish to participate in a wide-ranging discussion of the various national/regional economic successes and failures you’ve listed. My interest is much more in language and in the ways that participants express opinions in forums like this one. I will only note that many, from all gradations of the political spectrum, have remarked on the increasing dissolution of the nation state.
You’ve sowed my statements with a lot of straw, and its ironic that the only “policy” I advanced was for less quasi-propaganda and sloganizing in these discussions. Alas, my optimistic suggestion reaped a harvest of bad fruit.
regards, Christopher
I wonder what happened to the millions of dollors sent for child education by Asha and AID?
Your association of obvious dissimilars here to undermine my point is disappointing.
Chris, it’s pretty bold of you to complain about this…seeing as how you managed to worm Iraq into a discussion of child poverty in India.
The reason I referenced GE’s Welch research facility is that technological innovation by individual groups is a unique feature of capitalism. Arms sales are simply not. Sure, there’s the occasional arms transfer to a despot; but that happens under both capitalist and communist regimes. In fact, it’s the primary hard currency source of many leftist countries. North Korea is just following in the same tradition of all those peace-lovin’ Soviets and Red Chinese:
Tell me, are you going to blame “wealth creation” for this?
Point being that arms sales from and to dictators occur in communist countries as well. Ergo snide scare-quoting of the term “wealth creation” is inappropriate, for arms sales are a fact of international life…and clearly not an evil solely or even primarily associated with capitalism. If you were at all interested in quantifying this phenomenon, you would know that the majority of illicit arms transfers (in the sense of violations of international treaties) have not been conducted by capitalist countries but by imperial despots of various stripes (Islamists, Commies, etc.)
Further point being that your invocation of Iraq (!) and international arms sales (!!) was a transparent attempt to derail the conversation into the evils (mostly imagined) of Amerikkka…thereby impugning the free market by association.
the only “policy” I advanced
Come now Chris, let’s not be disingenuous. When one characterizes recent economic history as the “strong doing what they will, the weak doing what they must”, one is clearly not on the side of meritocracy and the market. It’s bewildering to me that you seem to prefer coercive transfer to voluntary exchange; I suppose the former is just the “weak doing what they must”, even if that means sending every landed farmer to their deaths.
I will only note that many, from all gradations of the political spectrum, have remarked on the increasing dissolution of the nation state.
I suppose if you got Zmag and Stormfront together, they’d sure hope for the end of certain nation states. But I really don’t know what you’re referring to if you mean predictions made in earnest.
Dude your fascination with laissez-faire free markets is pretty quaint…and not to mention stuck in the late 1800s (robber barons, social darwinism, etc).
As anyone with the least bit of economics-related education knows, “further liberalization” will only work assuming perfect markets, perfect information, no bureaucracy, etc.
Read some JM Keynes (hardly the Marxist).
Hello gc,
In my view, the enormous expenditures of life and treasure that result from wars like the present one in Iraq figure highly in the calculus of immiseration. Child poverty in India and the fact of perpetual warfare are clearly not causally related. They do, however, have the same family bloodline.
Your insistence on framing things in Capitalist- Marxist terms convinces me that reasonable discussion is not possible with you. I don’t want to be in the role of genial professor gently guiding the zealous undergraduate.
I wish you more flexible/realistic paradigms in your intellectual journey.
regards, Christopher
This really sucks. 400 million kids is more than the entire population of the US.
Frankly, I sometimes think that India needs to spend more money in things like this and public health and not worry so much about building the snaziest airport o r the worlds tallest building. These are more pressing problems and they are of a fundamental nature. In the same manner that you need to learn the alphabet to read and write, the same way you need to build the solid building blocks of society, and the children are these building blocks.
As anyone with the least bit of economics-related education knows, “further liberalization” will only work assuming perfect markets, perfect information, no bureaucracy, etc.
Ummm, further liberalization means less bureaucracy. As for the rest…reading Joseph Stiglitz’ pop books does not equate to an understanding of asymmetric information theory, and most professional economists — you know, the guys who might have the “least bit of economics education” — support further liberalization in India. One example:
I mean, it mystifies me that you think statist regulation is preferable to loosening up the economy. You’re the one stuck in the late 1800’s…can you even explain why China and India are booming now rather than 20 years ago? China had hard communism, India had soft socialism, but both strangled the economy relative to economic liberalism.
Can you point to a single example of a socialist country that’s richer than a capitalist control? The experiment’s been done many times — as I pointed out above, look at Hong Kong/China, North Korea/South Korea, East Germany/West Germany, etc. Where in the world has a country gotten wealthier by increasing the regulatory burden, increasing the nationalization of industries, and increasing the tax rate? Concrete examples, please…
Ooops, here was the one example link above:
There are dozens more economists — academic and corporate — who have gone on the record saying similar things. Where are the ones who think India’s economic growth is hampered by a deficiency of regulation and bureaucracy? And, more to the point, where are the ones who contend — as you do — that liberalization and bureaucracy reduction have nothing to do with each other?
India needs to spend more money in things like this and public health and not worry so much about building the snaziest airport o r the worlds tallest building. These are more pressing problems and they are of a fundamental nature.
This is exactly what I predicted would happen — it’s not enough for people to feel a “generalized bad feeling” about the existence of poverty. Instead, they refuse to admit that the poverty rate has declined more rapidly under liberalization than under the statism of the 1947-1990 era. For India to “spend that money” means raising taxes, killing entrepreneurship, and returning to the dead hand of socialism. That snazzy airport returns its costs a hundred fold in terms of increased business and foreign trade…while the program to “help the poor” suffers a death by a thousand cuts as various IAS pigs take their turns at the trough.
Where does government revenue come from? Why has tax revenue increased as regulation and socialism have decreased? These are the questions you need to ask before proposing any vast, economy-killing redistributive measures. The fact is that government spending programs to “feed the hungry” do a far worse job than a free market would. One need only compare the bread lines of the USSR or the ration queues of India to the local supermarket to see this.
I don’t want to be in the role of genial professor
That’s a humorous crack given my occupation…let’s just say that you probably aren’t in danger of making the economics faculty at any respectable school in the near future.
framing things in Capitalist- Marxist terms
If you refuse to admit that you stand for rehashed Marxism, you’re right, we can’t have much of a discussion. What do you advocate? What do you have to offer besides amateurish attempts to equate computer science startups with the war in Iraq? Wars and arms transfers are clearly not unique to capitalist countries; but large scale private wealth creation is.
Why is India booming now? Why wasn’t it booming when your friends were in control? These are the first questions you need to answer.
I mean, basic machine learning theory tells you that when it comes to classifying options, you want to seize upon the distinctive features rather than the ones that do not differ much between choices…which means that you need to come up with better examples of capitalism’s ostensible evil than the system-invariant features proferred above.
Haha, further evidence of your over-inflated ego. First get a nobel prize, then go around calling people’s professional output “pop”….if Stiglitz is “pop” your ass is “unsigned”.
Still Stiglitz is irrelevant, I questioned the following quote, and rightly:
You contradict yourself later by implying that tackling assymetric information is a problem….(so its not just about freeing up the markets…and no, liberalization does not equal increasing information transparency, a government can just as easily facilitate that, and probably in a better way).
Sweden
Continue to be mystified since I never said I was opposed to loosening up the economy. I did object to doing nothing besides loosening up the economy.
Your posts continually evidence that you don’t have positive opinions and political theories of your own. Rather, your worldview rests in the negation of those of others. Your entire purpose on Sepia Mutiny is to vainly try to define your enemy views (this thread, the tirade against Saurav’s putative views elsewhere) and then attack them. Go get a hobby or something chump.
Sweden
You really just set them up so I can knock ’em down, don’t you? 🙂 First “India is the country with the most Muslims” and now this. Educate yourself
Re: Stiglitz, I’ll tell you what — let’s poll Nobel laureates in economics on what course of action for India is best. Oh wait…we already did:
You don’t know anything about this subject, if you really think that the economics profession — including the people at the top of the field — is against further liberalization of India.
I never said I was opposed to loosening up the economy.
If you’re for addressing poverty by expanding the power of government rather than reducing it, that’s a problem. What’s the point of loosening up the economy only to choke it again with yet more IAS babus? Why is it that poverty has dropped most precipitously in the past 15 years, when India listened to those oh-so-out-of-touch free marketeers…while the soft socialism of the previous 4 decades saw no such improvement?
Now, it may be that I’ve misconstrued you; perhaps if you were specific on what exactly you propose besides further liberalization, I might agree. Infrastructure improvement? Surely. Scientific research spending? Yes. But more socialism, red tape, punitive taxation, and economy killing quotas? Never.
Sweden ranks 14th on the World Index for ecnomic freedom ahead of Germany, France and Canada. Just because they have welfare benifits like public healthcare doesn’t make them socialist.
Countries like Sweden are only socialist when compared to places like America.
True, Sweden like India has high progressive taxation. But Swedan unlike India has low tarrifs, an open banking sector and encourages foriegn investment.
I am not averse to the government subsidizing things like healthcare and education to a certain extent. But you need to realize the only real method through which 400 million people (kids) can escape poverty is through wealth creation not wealth redistribution.
Hello gc,
No I’m not interested in an economics professorship.
I am a musician, very happy and reasonably successful in the profession I have fought a lifetime for.
I also write cultural and music criticism.
My heros, to name several, are Jacques Barzun, Werner Herzog, Keith Jarrett, Thomas Mann, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Annie Dillard, ee cummings, and others. Not a Marxist among the lot.
I do repudiate Marxism, though was somewhat interested years ago to learn that Simone Weil had a period of flirtation with it. (And even met with Lenin.)
I can only reiterate my point, and my initial impulse remains unchanged. The slogans and euphemisms that are sprinkled throughout your posts here surrender useful analysis to propaganda. Moreover, though you demonstrate some mastery of the topic, and there is value in your remarks, these positives are largely nullfied both by your rigid fundamentalism and your stubborn inability to comprehend your interlocutor’s reasonings.
This reader hopes to amend that harsh evaluation.
regards, Christopher
By the way, I am an amateur in the original, Latin (amator) sense of the word: lover, devoted pursuer of an object.
A Socialist party has run the government in Sweden in 6 out of the last 7 decades. That does make it socialist. Furthermore, your reasoning erroneously assumes that “economic freedom” is antithetical to socialism or socialist philosophies (which are different than communism or totalitarianism by the way….) Sweden is indeed a socialist-based welfare state, and its damn successful too in many ways (see below).
The example of Sweden and US blacks is not relevant. You asked for a socialist country that is richer than ANY capitalist [country]. Sweden is the answer. So what if US blacks are richer? Nobody is comparing Sweden to the US.
But hell if you really want to compare the two countries, I’m sure you’re aware that Sweden ranks well ahead of the US in the UN Human Development Index.
Another socialist welfare state, Norway, has a higher GDP per capita than the USA.
Also I like how you skirted around the problem of China. It is both totalitarian AND communist. If you want to talk about government bureaucracy and redtape, few countries are worse. But as you know Chinese companies are putting their American competitors to shame, even Walmart has recognized that. Point is, economic success is not as simplistic as simply liberalizing and doing nothing else. You admitted as much in your last post (contradicting your first post, which I responded to)
Yes China has done better now that it has liberalized. Nobody contests that. But the point of this thread was to ask what is to be done about poverty in India. The answer is not simply to liberalize. In fact, unregulated liberalization leads to more povery in the short run (decades or longer), especially due to the advantages of the already-successful, including network effects, economies of scale, path dependence and the like.
I don’t know where it falls in the socialist-welfarestate-capitalist spectrum, but I recently learned that NewZealand is another welfare state and quite a successfull model at that.
ps:It’s interesting to see a post on poor Asian kids, meander into Iraq, Korea, Asha, AID and quoteunquote, India has most Muslims. So?
What gc said. Unfortunately, India doesn’t seem to have fully learned the lesson that socialism doesn’t pay. See the following two articles:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4177148.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4156612.stm
Regarding the example of Sweden, the question of whether the country is socialist today is besides the point. What matters is how socialist the country was back when its per capita GDP (in absolute dollars) was less than $600, as India’s presently is. I’m pretty damn sure that Sweden was a lot socialist back then – or even when its per capita GDP was several times higher, for that matter. As the Chinese understand, but Eurotrash socialists like Sonia Gandhi don’t, a leviathan welfare state is a luxury that only wealthy nations can afford.
As for Norway, the only reason its per capita GDP is higher than the US is because of its oil wealth, which goes a long way in a country of 4.5 million people.
This blog was about suffering children.
The discussion became a posturing and somewhat dated debate about the relative virtues of two economic models.
I feel stupid for participating.
Considering that this was your 10th post (now out of 27) on the thread, I think it’s a little late for you to start complaining about your participation.
Anyway, while I can’t speak for gc, in my case, it’s precisely because India is such a poor country, and because I’ve seen the gut-wrenching poverty that so many Indians live in first-hand, that the socialist lunacy embraced by its leaders over the years sparks my rhetorical ire.
I get your point eric. It’s essential to find a clearer understanding of the causes of these miseries.
My admission was not a complaint. (Though I see how you could read one.) And my posts were an effort to center the discussion.
This is my second day participating on Sepia. I’m a little surprised by the vehemence and energy of the discussions, but, on balance, I take that as a positive.
vurdlife – define ‘unregulated liberalization?’ And you said it leads to more poverty in the short run. Are you saying in the long run there is less poverty? So, for a short term gain you should eschew long term gains?
And Sweden has a large welfare state, but it actually has a pretty liberal economy in some ways and is less regulated in the business sector than the United States. To have so much money to spread around, you first have to make that money (I wish I could find the article, it was linked on Arts and Letters Daily about a month or so ago – about how liberal Sweden’s economy is. Vurdlife – they have a lot of foreign investment, which is something you seem to be against.)
Ok, I’m wrong. Couldn’t find the article on Arts and Letters Daily, but according to the Freedom index from Heritage (I know, I know) Sweden ranks just behind the US on the economic freedom scale. Interestingly, New Zealand is pretty high on that list, above the US and Sweden. So, relatively speaking, these are pretty liberal economies.
ok somehow the link tab is isn’t working for me
http://heritage.org/research/features/index.countries.fm
I am not an economist, have no idea how they come up with these rankings, or if they are just a bunch of baloney. But it is interesting, isn’t it?
For all you read about Bangalore’s IT millionaires and Indian-American software entrapanuers, the sad reality is that the overwhelming majority of Indians are poor villagers or urban slum dwellers. These people are poorly educated, often illiterate, and struggling to get by. They’re also around 80% of India’s population and are more representative of life in India than Indians you see so much of in the media.
Chinese economic development has centered around economic development zones, where the government allows an extra degree of economic freedom.
By your logic the Communist party has been in power in China since the 50s so the china is a communist country.
The socialist democrat party started out as a traditional labour party but today is more of a centrist, white collar party.
I guess you are right, but in an indian context socialism is associated with Nehru style ‘mixed-economic’ system which is a middle groud between outright marxism and capitalism (leaning more towards marxism than capitalism).
India has a lot more similarities with China than with Sweden 🙂
80%? I have grave doubts over these numbers being bandied around. Now, where we have seen that before – the AIDS crisis, of course. In both cases, the magnitude of the problem cannot be (and need not be) exaggerated, but that is exactly what is done. In the AIDS case, the motivation was funding for NGOs (and god knows those folks have made money).
If we do accept the poverty-line figures, and agree that being just above the poverty-line means near-destitution, that still means about 50% or so people in India have access to the basic requirements of life. I don’t see how that means 80% of our children are deprived of basic needs? What parameters were used to come up with the numbers?
Yes.
Relying on pure and simple liberalization and free markets is like saying “ok everyone start treating each other well and sooner or later we will live in paradise”…It works well in theory but “the long run” could be infinity.
Child issues are not isolated issues, they are related to family, community, state, national and international issues. So when we are thinking to address the issues of the children we must have to address the larger issues. UN Convention on Rights of the Children has given a clear direction in this regards.