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Gujarat going American way

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Gujarat going American way Empty Gujarat going American way

Post by confuzzled dude Thu Apr 24, 2014 3:05 pm

One way of examining that question is to compare wages with the state-level official poverty line that is based in some indicator of the prices of essential consumption items.
 
So let us consider the wages of a male casual worker in the rural areas, and assume that this worker is willing to work 25 days in the month and is able to find such for 25 days. (Incidentally, the latter is actually a heroic assumption, since it is almost never met!)
 
If such a worker is the sole earner of the family, how much would that wage income generate? Specifically, how many people could he support to ensure consumption above the poverty line?
 
Chart 2 presents the results of such an exercise across Indian states. It turns out that on average, for India as a whole, such a worker could support 4.6 people at consumption above the poverty line with 25 days work at prevailing casual wage rates.
 
The highest ratio is for Kerala, at 8.5 — but this reflects the effect of migration and remittances. Some Northeastern states also have high ratios, as do Tamil Nadu and Jammu and Kashmir.
 
But in Gujarat, this ratio is only 3.1 — the second lowest in the country and indeed only slightly above the lowest (which is for Chhattisgarh at 3.0).
 
This adverse situation in Gujarat may seem surprising to some, but in fact it is actually an expected outcome of the very model of development that is being projected as a success story.
 
This is a model that, even more than for India as a whole, relies on patronising and providing incentives to large business while suppressing wage incomes.
 
So the much-vaunted “growth” in Gujarat is not only overstated — its fruits are also very unequally distributed, so that workers in Gujarat are among the worst of anywhere in India
 
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/c-p-chandrasekhar/have-workers-in-gujarat-benefited-from-development/article5855349.ece

confuzzled dude

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