Gunter Grass on globalisation

[John Mage]

> >Has he bothered to learn anything about the effects of
> >"neoliberalism" on India?
> >
> >
> >Brad DeLong
> >
> >Every Indian I've ever met says squalor and degradation.
> 
> 
> The United Nations Human Development Index has India at 0.431 in 
> 1980, 0.470 in 1985, 0.509 in 1990, and 0.563 in 1998. India's 
> decade-and-a-half of semi-neoliberalism seem to have seen a lot of 
> economic growth along with some increases in education and some 
> reductions in infant mortality.

Percentage of People below Poverty Line in India, 1993-4 and 1998

	Rural Poverty	(%) 	Urban Poverty (%)   Combined Ratio(%)    Absolute# 

1993-94		37.27				32.36					35.95					328.5 million
1998			42.58				32.87					39.89					376.8 million

Source: S.P.Gupta, "Trickle Down Theory Revisited: The Role of
Employment and Poverty". _Indian Journal of Labor Economics_, vol.43,
no.1, 2000

The latest (1999-2000) round of National Sample Survey is not comparable
as a result of changed methodology. These number games are all laid out
in detail in Abhijit Sen, "Consumption, Distribution & Poverty" 
http://www.macroscan.com/analysis/epwpov.PDF
He asserts that there is a "general consensus that rural poverty at an
all-India level did _not_ show any declining trend over the 1990s."

john mage