Gunter Grass on globalisation

[Brad DeLong]

>  > >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

The big distortion here is the claim that the rise in the rural 
poverty rate by 8.6 percentage points between 1990-1991 and 1992 was 
the direct result of the sudden imposition of "neoliberal" policies...