Garibi hatao

by charvaka Wed May 18, 2011 8:29 pm

The Times reports about India's anti-poverty programs, quoting a World Bank report on those programs commissioned by the government of India.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/world/asia/19india.html

India spent 2 percent of its gross domestic product, or $28.6 billion
last year, on social programs to alleviate and prevent poverty, the
World Bank said, a higher percentage than any other country in Asia and
about three times China’s spending.

The bank said that 59 percent of the grain allotted for public distribution to the poor does not reach those households.
Instead of distributing food, the government might be better off giving
out food stamps or cash transfers that can be easily traced through
technology, the World Bank said.

by Hellsangel Wed May 18, 2011 8:34 pm

And I thought you were invoking guruvu-gaaru!

by Guest Wed May 18, 2011 8:46 pm

charvaka wrote:The Times reports about India's anti-poverty programs, quoting a World Bank report on those programs commissioned by the government of India.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/world/asia/19india.html

India spent 2 percent of its gross domestic product, or $28.6 billion
last year, on social programs to alleviate and prevent poverty, the
World Bank said, a higher percentage than any other country in Asia and
about three times China’s spending.

The bank said that 59 percent of the grain allotted for public distribution to the poor does not reach those households.
Instead of distributing food, the government might be better off giving
out food stamps or cash transfers that can be easily traced through
technology, the World Bank said.

by charvaka Wed May 18, 2011 9:06 pm

Rashmun wrote:

I really, really hope that was tongue in cheek. Otherwise, you need to promise yourself you won't think about Akbar or Jahangir again for at least 3 months.

by Guest Wed May 18, 2011 9:09 pm

charvaka wrote:
Rashmun wrote:
I really, really hope that was tongue in cheek. Otherwise, you need to promise yourself you won't think about Akbar or Jahangir again for at least 3 months.

ok it was not tongue in cheek but it somehow seemed strangely appropriate. the painting reminds us that removing poverty has been an age old dream.

by Hellsangel Wed May 18, 2011 9:11 pm

charvaka wrote:
I really, really hope that was tongue in cheek. Otherwise, you need to promise yourself you won't think about Akbar or Jahangir again for at least 3 months.

https://such.forumotion.com/t474-idee-fixe#5778

by Guest Wed May 18, 2011 9:39 pm

Hellsangel wrote:
https://such.forumotion.com/t474-idee-fixe#5778

Missing Luke Warmus, are we?

by Guest Thu May 19, 2011 12:26 pm

charvaka wrote:The Times reports about India's anti-poverty programs, quoting a World Bank report on those programs commissioned by the government of India.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/world/asia/19india.html

...the World Bank said, a higher percentage than any other country in Asia and
about three times China’s spending....

Instead of distributing food, the government might be better off giving
out food stamps or cash transfers that can be easily traced through
technology, the World Bank said.

distributing food stamps or distributing food is not a practical idea. if it were, it would have already been done. it seems the world bank was being a tinge sarcastic in making the above observation. i will quote amartya sen from his book, the argumentative indian:

How can things be changed? The first thing to get rid of is the astonishing smugness about India’s food record and the widespread ignorance that supports it. India has not, we must recognize unambiguously, done well in tackling the pervasive presence of persistent hunger. Not only are there persistent recurrences of severe hunger in particular regions (the fact that they don’t grow into full-fledged famines does not arrest their local brutality), but there is also a gigantic prevalence of endemic hunger across much of India. Indeed, India does much worse in this respect than even Sub-Saharan Africa.[2] Calculations of general undernourishment — what is sometimes called "protein-energy malnutrition" — is nearly twice as high in India as in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is astonishing that despite the intermittent occurrence of famine in Africa, it too manages to ensure a much higher level of regular nourishment than does India. About half of all Indian children are, it appears, chronically undernourished, and more than half of all adult women suffer from anaemia. In maternal undernourishment as well as the incidence of underweight babies, and also in the frequency of cardiovascular diseases in later life (to which adults are particularly prone if nutritionally deprived in the womb), India’s record is among the very worst in the world.

A striking feature of the persistence of this dreadful situation is not only that it continues to exist, but that the serious public attention it gets, when it gets any at all, is so badly divided.[3] Indeed, it is amazing to hear persistent repetition of the false belief that India has managed the challenge of hunger very well since independence. This is based on a profound confusion between famine prevention, which is a simple achievement, and the avoidance of endemic undernourishment and hunger, which is a much more complex task. India has done worse than nearly every country in the world in the latter respect. There are, of course, many different ways of shooting oneself in the foot, but smugness based on ignorance is among the most effective.

In this context, it is particularly remarkable that india has continued to amass extraordinarily large stocks of food grain in the central government's reserve, without finding good use for them. In 1998 the stock was about 18 million tonnes - close to the official buffer stock' norms. It has climbed and climbed since then, firmly surpassing 62 million tonnes at the time this essay was written (as a Nehru Lecture in 2001). To take Jean Dreze's graphic description, if all the sacks of grain were laid up in a row, this would stretch more than a million kms, taking us to the moon and back. To see it in another way, the stocks substantially exceeded one tonne of food grain for every family below the poverty line.

sen goes on to explain why this happened. namely that this was the consequence of high minimum support prices for food grain -- for wheat and rice in particular. but, eventually, reducing hunger became a victim of this "friendly fire" (a term sen invents to describe benign acts, that, quite unintentionally, hurt the ones they were designed to protect). later on, sen also suggests a remedy, namely what we ought to do with such huge stocks of food grains. (if we don't do anything, they will rot, or, like other nations, we might decide to dump them in the sea -- that is if we aren't doing this already.) sen's remedy is presented as a footnote. he recommends thusly:

The recent initiative of the indian government (in late 2004) to help provide cook midday meals in schools across the country is a very positive move that has emerged since the Nehru Lecture was given in 2001. This initiative, which followed directly from the Indian Supreme Court's visionary decision to cover this right among the entitlements of children, has favourable potential in simultaneously addressing the twin problems of child undernourishment and school absenteeism. It has had much success in states (such as Tamil Nadu) where it has been in use for many years, and it is beginning to have positive effects where it is just being introduced. Investigations by the Pratichi Trust in West Bengal record higher school attendance and a high level of satisfaction from the poorer families.

all state governments, including that of mamata banerjee, should clamour at the centre for releasing these central reserves of food grains to provide for the free midday meals in their schools. of course, you cannot just serve uncooked wheat and rice but at least you have more than half the cost covered. since most of it is rice anyway and since rice takes negligible expense to cook, serve them just rice!

by charvaka Thu May 19, 2011 12:40 pm

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:distributing food stamps or distributing food is not a practical idea. if it were, it would have already been done.

I disagree. Two things... one, technology has been changing so much, what was infeasible five years ago is no longer infeasible. With mobile payment platforms, cash / food stamps may be easier to implement in a transparent manner than direct food distribution as part of the PDS / TPDS. Two, our system isn't exactly cutting edge where everything that is practical has already been done.

by charvaka Thu May 19, 2011 12:42 pm

HK - thanks for posting the extracts from Sen's book. I will read them later today.

by Hellsangel Thu May 19, 2011 12:43 pm

charvaka wrote:
Huzefa Kapasi wrote:distributing food stamps or distributing food is not a practical idea. if it were, it would have already been done.
I disagree. Two things... one, technology has been changing so much, what was infeasible five years ago is no longer infeasible. With mobile payment platforms, cash / food stamps may be easier to implement in a transparent manner than direct food distribution as part of the PDS / TPDS. Two, our system isn't exactly cutting edge where everything that is practical has already been done.

That will lead to its own black market in a country like India.

by Guest Thu May 19, 2011 1:30 pm

charvaka wrote:
Huzefa Kapasi wrote:distributing food stamps or distributing food is not a practical idea. if it were, it would have already been done.
I disagree. Two things... one, technology has been changing so much, what was infeasible five years ago is no longer infeasible. With mobile payment platforms, cash / food stamps may be easier to implement in a transparent manner than direct food distribution as part of the PDS / TPDS. Two, our system isn't exactly cutting edge where everything that is practical has already been done.

but the idea of democracy is NOT about distributing free food to the hungry. it is against the ethos (look to socialism for this). democracies fights famines by providing employment to the hungry, not by giving free food to them.

by charvaka Thu May 19, 2011 10:45 pm

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:
but the idea of democracy is NOT about distributing free food to the hungry. it is against the ethos (look to socialism for this). democracies fights famines by providing employment to the hungry, not by giving free food to them.

Democracy and the welfare state are not at all opposed to each other; in practice they do go hand in hand. When you have inequality of income and wealth, democracies try to counterbalance that inequality with welfare-oriented policies. Besides, India a socialist republic according to its constitution. Wink

by Kris Thu May 19, 2011 11:25 pm

charvaka wrote:
Huzefa Kapasi wrote:
but the idea of democracy is NOT about distributing free food to the hungry. it is against the ethos (look to socialism for this). democracies fights famines by providing employment to the hungry, not by giving free food to them.
Democracy and the welfare state are not at all opposed to each other; in practice they do go hand in hand. When you have inequality of income and wealth, democracies try to counterbalance that inequality with welfare-oriented policies. Besides, India a socialist republic according to its constitution.

>>>> It is a bit of a non-sequitur really, although in common usage the concepts are used interchangeably. I see 'democracy' as simply a form of governance and capitalism/socialism as the methodology by which resources are allocated. This is why 'socialistic (aaa-rgh! Smile

democracies' are possible, in theory anyway. That aside, I see a basic safety net as a necessity, but going full bore to equalize wealth would be massively counter-productive. This is one of the reasons I like the constant pull/push between the right and the left on economic policies. For all the sound and fury it generates, somewhere beneath all the politicking there is a method to keep things in balance.

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