Not sure where Chomsky is getting his data from. Since the early 90s, there has been no major change in poverty rates in rural India, but there has been a lowering in urban areas. Inequality has increased.
A major aspect of what is going on in India is regional variation, which has become more extreme. Most on this list know of more or less socialist Kerala. Some states are booming, mostly in the northwest. Some are in terrible shape, mostly in the northeast, notably Bihar, West Bengal, and Orissa.
One aspect of the reforms that I think is worthwhile has been the reduction of regulations. I am not against regulations in general, but in India they have been far more entangled and arbitrary and often simply bizarre and certainly counterproductive. A reasonable reduction in the "regulation raj" is not such a bad thing in itself, and certainly more significant than any opening internationally.
BTW, India actually still has central planning, albeit of the indicative variety. Barkley Rosser ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2001 12:40 AM Subject: Re: Gunter Grass on globalisation
> On Tue, 14 Aug 2001, Brad DeLong wrote:
>
> > >From an interview with Günter Grass: [Globalisation =] A fusion of
> > >large corporations driven by profit only, layoffs and unemployment,
> > >concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and a world of luxury
> > >for some slender layers of society which we can all see. In short, a
> > >rampant increase of poverty and misery for the vast sections. Of
> > >course, politicians are uttering the right pious words but they have
> > >not been able to reverse the trend. Yes, we all have an expression for
> > >this trend of neo-liberalism whose impact can be traced everywhere,
> > >even in India.
> >
> > Has he bothered to learn anything about the effects of "neoliberalism"
> > on India?
>
> From Noam Chomsky, *Propaganda and the Public Mind* (South End Press,
> 2001), pp. 174f.:
>
> India is carrying out what are called reforms, so it's now moving itself
> into the U.S.-dominated system, which it hadn't done before, with
> interesting effects on the country. Here it's regarded by good
> economists, and not totally falsely, as a great success.
>
> Reforms were instituted in 1990 and 1991. "Reforms" means liberalization
> and opening the country up to foreign investment, subordinating the
> country to the corporate-dominated globalization system. So naturally
> we're in favor of that. India's macroeconomic statistics are not bad, so
> there's been growth and great praise for India, despite objections that it
> is moving too slowly. It didn't liberalize finance, as South Korea did
> under U.S. pressure. This is part of the reason, it is widely assumed,
> that South Korea was hit so hard by the Asian financial crisis while
> India, like China, stayed more or less immune. There's a fair amount of
> U.S. and other foreign investment coming in, a lot of buying up of the
> country. But there's more to it, as usual.
>
> India, unlike the United States and like practically every other
> industrial country outside the U.S., keeps regular social statistics.
> The U.S. is maybe the only industrial country that doesn't do this.
> India has a regular publication of social indicators. The central
> statistical office does sample studies every year and big studies every
> five years. Those are interesting. India is mostly a rural country, so
> the interesting question is, What's happening to the rural population?
> They study poverty, per capita consumption, and per capita production in
> the rural areas. Pre-reform, up until 1990, rural poverty wag-) sharply
> decreasing. Both per capita consumption and per capita production were
> going up in the rural areas, including non-agricultural production,
> because they were putting money into non-agricultural production.
>
> In 1990, all those figures reverse. Rural poverty stagnates or gets worse.
> Consumption again stagnates or declines, and production decreases in 1991,
> not by accident. That's when the reforms were instituted, and the reforms
> have a lot of effects. For one thing, they opened the country up to
> subsidized foreign agricultural imports, which undercut poor farmers.
> Public spending declines under "reforms," which also require reducing
> resources for rural development. And it shows. That's the other side,
> not the side you read about unless you're reading the Indian press. And
> that's very typical, incidentally.
>
>
>
>