Five development lessons Angus Deaton can teach Mr Modi

1. Nutrition standards in India is appalling: don't mess with them further
As India wrestles with culturally specific bans on food items, particularly those that are sources of animal protein, such as beef, or the elimination of eggs from the mid-day meal scheme in Madhya Pradesh, the battle to achieve global standards of nutrition becomes that much harder to win.

2. GDP alone will not change things
Like his fellow welfare economists, Angus Deaton, too, would have advised Mr Modi to not overlook the constraints of the current times and oversell a "superpower future" for political mileage. That despite a commendable GDP of 1.87 trillion US dollars, which is third highest in the world after the United States and China (not including European Union), India struggles with swathes of poverty-stricken regions with conditions worse than sub-Saharan Africa. Poverty reduction is as much a matter of surgical interventions to improve local conditions of healthcare, education, employment, etc., as it is a matter of driving growth by bringing in foreign capital and investment and steering the growth story. Slashing public funds for healthcare initiatives and employment schemes from the previous government will not help anybody.      

3. Match rising incomes with equality
While per capita income and per capita purchasing power have increased substantially, income gulf among different sections of Indian society has only widened. India features among the bottom few as far as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are concerned, with abysmal performances in health, nutrition, education, human rights, and other indicators of well-being. While Angus Deaton certainly shares PM Modi's penchant for anecdotes to shed light on particular situations, the Nobel laureate certainly does not endorse the obfuscation that is a habit of our prime minister. It would do well for the PM to become responsible with his public speeches and approaches and get rid of the bubble wraps such as the mythical "Gujarat model of development" for any real outcomes.  

4. Job growth is as real as job loss
Every time the PM launches a new scheme, there's the effervescence and euphoria of how many new jobs will be created as a result. For example, any mention of Digital India, Make in India, among others, include talk of the tens of thousands of brand new employment opportunities. However, Deaton sounds an important caveat, using the "Schumpeterian theory of creative destruction", wherein older jobs are lost to technological innovation. In other words, the net jobs created must be calculated against net jobs lost in order to calculate employment growth. Hence, an over-reliance on technology and industry, without the important supervision of a government as regulator and provider of equal opportunity, can in fact harm the economic ecosystem in the long run.

5. Go beyond the aggregate and average
Time and again, Deaton has stressed how India's "social statistics are awfully out of date" and has emphasised the need to steer the economic narrative to better conditions of affordable and efficient healthcare, education for all, nutrition and social happiness. For Deaton, it's not a growth story until it's an inclusive growth story. Can Mr Modi, with one foot in the communal boat and other in over-reliance on private capital, genuinely claim an inclusive growth story for India?      

This is for you, Mr Modi. Tell the carefully-appointed overseers of NITI Aayog to not junk Angus Deaton's work the way they have cast aside Amartya Sen's invaluable research. Here's one for the cheerleaders of equality - economic and otherwise.    

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