Gunter Grass on globalisation

[Brad DeLong]

>On Tue, 14 Aug 2001, Brad DeLong wrote:
>
>>  >From an interview with G¸nter 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....
>
>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.

Is this a joke?

India had a bad harvest in 1991--that's why rural poverty went up in 
1991. After 1992, rural poverty went back down.

Shouldn't a book published in 2001 *mention* what happened after 1992?

Brad DeLong