Gunter Grass on globalisation

Brad DeLong jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu
Thu Aug 16 10:18:05 PDT 2001



>John,
> The second statement you made about
>no trend in rural poverty in the 1990s in India
>is what I am aware of. My data came from
>T.N. Srinavasin. Again, his data suggests
>declining poverty rates in urban areas, but
>no change in rural areas. There certainly
>are difficult problems of measurment involved
>here.
>Barkley Rosser

The failure of rural poverty to show a clear decline (or, perhaps, any decline) in India may be due to relatively sharp changes in relative prices that have boosted the cost of living of the poor while reducing the cost of living in the rich.

But perhaps the more important point is that India is *not* unitary. IIRC, rural poverty in some states (Gujerat, Maharashtra, Punjab) has shown a striking decline; while rural poverty in other states (U.P., Orissa, Bengal) has shown a striking increase over the past decade.

One thing that reforms have done is to let loose forces making for profound increases in regional as well as class-vs-class inequality.

Brad DeLong



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