CUTS Blog on Developmental Issues

The creation of the modern Indian state predates the birth of its eastern neighbour, Bangladesh by almost a quarter of a century. It is, therefore, no surprise that India is sometimes accused of treating its younger neighbour with an avuncular air. However, recent developmental triumphs in Bangladesh show that this densely populated and often dismissed nation might have finally come of age. Indeed, many experts in ‘avuncular’ India now acknowledge that there are many lessons that our practitioners can learn from Bangladesh’s low cost preventive health campaigns and its schemes to empower the poor through the spread of micro finance facilities.

One just has to look at comparable data on life expectancy to realise that Bangladesh has almost bridged the gap between itself and India in this key human development indicator. In 1980 life expectancy in India exceeded that in Bangladesh by a good 6 years. Today it is almost negligible at 0.8 years - the two countries have life expectancies of 63.7 and 64.5 years respectively. A simple preventive health campaign based on the spread of sanitation and hygienic living habits has helped to increase life expectancy by 15 years in the span of a quarter century in Bangladesh. This deserves as much applause as the Indian growth miracle - the tripling of per capita income from 1990 to 2006.

Bangladesh has been much more successful in translating its comparatively limited increase in affluence - its per capita income did not even double in 1990-2006 - to major reductions in morbidity and mortality and therefore increases in human capabilities.

A nation is never too old to stop learning!

Siddhartha Mitra, Research Director, CUTS (July 3, 2008)

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Hybrid cars have been ushered into the Indian market with great fanfare and positive publicity. Such technologies indeed might be lifesavers. The media, however, seems to have gone overboard with its demand for waiver of customs duties on such cars.

Such duty waivers would bring about price-parity between hybrid foreign cars and their conventional counterparts. Hybrid cars, because of their mixed reliance on petrol and electric batteries, cut down fuel consumption by half. Fuel savings, in combination with the mentioned parity would imply that the overall cost of car travel would decline and the car market would expand; and, lo and behold, clogged streets in Bangalore and Bombay would start overflowing.

What is the ideal recommendation in this case? Simple: the trusted and proven combination of carrots and sticks with a reduction but not elimination of customs duties on hybrid cars coupled with higher taxes on conventional ones. The magnitudes of the reductions and increases should be chosen such that hybrid cars become preferable to conventional ones; but not by much so that the overall size of the country’s automobile fleet does not increase.

Food for thought: why don’t the governments in densely populated countries like India, China and Thailand equip their public buses with hybrid engines? This might result in both fuel economy and environmental sterilisation.

Siddhartha Mitra, Director (Research), CUTS (June 20, 2008)

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For years one of the standard excuses offered for the economic stagnation in Sub-Saharan Africa was that development projects got waylaid by malaria and AIDS epidemics. The good news is that much of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has experienced growth in the very recent past. Out of the 47 countries considered by the World Bank as part of SSA only 10 did not record positive average annual growth rates of per capita GDP in 1995-2005.

Was it malaria or AIDS that held these ten countries - Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Niger and Zimbabwe - back during this period?. The correct answer is neither! It is high time that such excuses are not offered because they are entirely invalidated by data. Of the ten countries listed here around six countries exhibit an incidence of AIDS which is below the SSA average and only two -Zimbabwe and Central African Republic - exceed the average figure significantly. Moreover, there are many SSA countries with AIDS incidence well above the average which are showing positive growth rates.

Thus, for human beings as well as countries there is life after AIDS. Ditto for malaria! In fact if we look at the countries for which malaria data are available out of those listed here, none have an eyeball popping incidence of malaria; it ranges from 6 to 24 cases per 1000 people per annum as opposed to growing Uganda or Sao Tome with an excess of 400 cases per 1000 people. Clearly, policy makers who want to rouse these economies into positive growth have to look elsewhere for diseases afflicting these countries.

Siddhartha Mitra, Director (Research), CUTS (June 18, 2008)

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In general less affluent India, particularly the rural areas, is steeped in ignorance; a majority will not know the name of the Indian Finance Minister and not feel uncomfortable at all when cornered about their ignorance. Is economic development the way out of this morass of ignorance? Apparently yes, but my empirical observations lead to other conclusions. In my stay in the US as a graduate student I discovered the same ignorance about politics and government as I had seen among common people in India.

There actually exists such a term as ‘rational ignorance’; it implies that you are better off spending more time on your own personal or business affairs, such as taking your wife out for dinner on a relaxed weekend or trying to sell that extra bar of soap outside office hours as a salesman, than sitting in front of the television switching from one business channel to the other trying to understand why the stock market continues to plummet while the economy continues to boom.

It is only then that I understand that the saying, “ignorance is bliss,” actually means “ignorance might lead to bliss.” Such understanding is deepened when I see the heightening awareness of my countrymen about caste issues holding up development through strikes. It is in these moments that I long for rational ignorance in others. And am I glad that my US experience indicates that development will not lead people to become less ignorant over time!

Siddhartha Mitra, Director (Research), CUTS (June 13, 2008)

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