INDIA AWAKES
‘INDIA AWAKES’ EXPLAINS A COUNTRY’S RISE FROM POVERTY TO PROSPERITY
Ambrish Mehta, a founding member of ARCH-Vahini, a non-governmental organization, helped the Sagai Village map out the land they farm so that they might ultimately be given deed to their land. PHOTO CREDIT JAMES TUSTY
Ambrish Mehta, a founding member of ARCH-Vahini, a non-governmental organization, helped the Sagai Village map out the land they farm so that they might ultimately be given deed to their land. PHOTO CREDIT JAMES TUSTY
by Eric D. Dixon
What makes the difference between
poverty and prosperity? For individuals and families, there could be an
endless number of variables, such as health, intelligence, education,
initiative, perseverance, community, or opportunity. At least some
circumstances vary widely in every case. When almost an entire society
begins to rise from poverty and approach prosperity, though, it’s
important to understand how and why it happens.INDIA AWAKES, a new documentary airing on a 'public television stations throughout the United States',
hosted by Swedish author and economist Johan Norberg, tells the story
of how a country mired in poverty for hundreds of years has seen a
dramatic change of course in the space of only a couple of decades. India has experienced a long history of deprivation, much of it
resulting from centuries of a caste system that kept people regimented
by genetic lineage into class, status, and even occupation — some, like
the Dalit, also known as “untouchables,” are shunned entirely by higher
castes. This alone would be enough to keep economic activity at a crawl,
because it prevents capital, labor, and entrepreneurial insight from
flowing to the best, most productive uses. An even bigger strike against
prosperity came in the late 1940s, after the British granted India’s
independence and the new government sought to alleviate poverty by
embracing socialism and its central planning — nationalizing industries,
building a maze of bureaucracy, erecting extensive trade barriers, and
controlling every aspect of the sprawling economy.
Even granting that India’s leaders had good intentions, their actions
were disastrous. India only plummeted further into hardship, with more
than half of the population living in poverty by the 1980s and a
financial crisis fast approaching. Redistribution may alleviate some
poverty temporarily, as long as there are still productive sectors of
the economy from which to take, but as economic activity grows scarce,
there’s little left to redistribute.
Despite India’s bleak prospects only 25 years ago, something
remarkable has happened between then and today. In 1991, a new prime
minister began a series of economic reforms, reducing India’s central
control of the economy and opening the country to an influx of foreign
investment. These reforms weren’t perfect, and could have gone much,
much further, but even this relatively small degree of new economic
freedom began to work wonders. Within a decade, the average income in
India had doubled, and nearly 250 million people — about a fifth of the
population — have risen out of poverty since then. A new middle class
has exploded, bringing extended families and villages into a newfound
and solid quality of life.
With such a dramatic turnaround in nationwide prosperity, the
question becomes how India can sustain its progress and bring the
benefits of this new era of opportunity to the people who are still
struggling. There are an estimated 25 million street vendors in India,
who sell everything from food and clothing to transportation and
electronics — and, despite their prevalence throughout the country, they
have often been denied legal status or recognition. This has begun to
change in recent years, often thanks to organizations working for civil society
which recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of the street vendors in
Jaipur, the capital of the Rajasthan state in northwest India. Banwari
Lal Sharma, one of the entrepreneurs featured in India Awakes
who started his first food cart with his wife more than 20 years ago,
expanded their business through tireless work but struggled under
India’s epidemic of public-sector corruption, bribes, raids,
confiscations, and evictions. He is now president of a growing
association of street vendors, fighting for their legal status and
protection, which also enables them make longer-term entrepreneurial
plans, invest in better goods and production, build a better quality of
life, and create jobs for others.
India’s population also contains a sizable population of agrarian
tribal people, who live in the hills away from mainstream society.
During India’s period of British rule, their traditional forests and
common lands were declared the king’s property, and the people whose
families had farmed and hunted that land for centuries suddenly found
that they were criminals for living the only way they knew. The status
of their lands didn’t change once India gained independence, and so
tribal villages were often subject to raids, property seizure, and
forced eviction by government officials. As with the uncertain status of
street vendors, tribes found that their precarious legal position left
them without any reason to invest in efficient cultivation, or to
improve their homes, lands, or other property that could be destroyed or
taken at any time — and they gained a strong incentive to extract as
many resources as possible from their depleting surroundings.
The government finally passed legislation that would grant indigenous
tribes legal title to specific parcels of land that they could prove
they had been cultivating prior to passage of the law, but even this
significant step didn’t offer much of a practical solution. How could
destitute villagers prove their past farming, especially when they had
tried to keep their activities as secluded as possible? India Awakes
tells the story of one village, led by a Sagai tribal leader named Rama
Bhai, whose applications were almost all refused. Barun Mitra, introduced the tribe to new technology — an innovative combination of
GPS plotting and archived Google Earth satellite images of their land —
that eventually allowed them to prove their property claims and acquire
legal title to their traditional lands, as well as a new future of
security and investment in efficient production.
“This is not rocket science,” explained Tom G. Palmer, Atlas
Network’s executive vice president of international programs, in an
interview for India Awakes. “All the way back to Aristotle,
people understood: If you can’t own it, you won’t improve it. And now
we’re seeing on the ground that when people gain that ownership right,
they invest. They improve, because they want a better life, like
everybody.”
India has a long way to go, and many people have yet to achieve the
newfound prosperity arising throughout the country. It’s evident,
though, that economic freedom is the crucial ingredient in India’s
recovery. One of the most dramatic stories of change in India Awakes
belongs to Mannem Madhusudana Rao, a member of the “untouchable” Dalit
caste whose family sacrificed everything to give him an education. After
he left his rural village for city life, his entrepreneurial initiative
gave him business success — and his ambition and perseverance helped
make him a millionaire in the construction industry. When economic
freedom is ascendant, people care far more about the value that others
provide than about their family background.
India Awakes demonstrates that the more the people of India
are able to build, produce, buy, sell, trade, and invest with one
another — and with the rest of the world — the more each person’s unique
talents and skills can find their own valuable niche in meeting the
needs of others, creating new wealth and opportunity at every turn.
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