lets look at some of the these numbers:
infant mortality:
1960-1980 -22%
1980-2000 -39%
1980-2000 being the neo-liberal days of glory (taking the conservative view. the wonders of colour TV and such were probably realized in the 90s). nice decrease, but how much of it due to the very nature of things? if you plotted 1940-1960, how would the numbers for 1960-1980 look w.r.t the rate of change?
life expectancy:
1955-1980 +36%
1980-2005 +21%
an actual decrease in the rate? in fact, looking at the graph, it looks like the greatest life expectancy improvement came in the period 1955-1970. of course squeezing out each extra year of life gets more difficult (a logarithmic curve?) given the limits of the human body and medicine. but we are not in the miracle territory here. IIRC, life expectancy in cuba (hardly a neo-liberal paradise) is higher than the 64 years that india currently offers its citizens.
adult illiteracy:
1955-1980 no data
of course we could rekindle the kerala debate all over again, at this point.
> About Cockburn: to my mind, apart from being factually sloppy (as
> Ulhas has already pointed out), he fails the crucial aesthetic test.
> His disparate (and somewhat shallow) observations do not add up to a
> coherent whole - and anything that lacks beauty cannot possibly reveal
> a truth, even an ugly one.
ah, memories of heidegger... ;-) but then there is also shakespeare. eye of the beholder and all that stuff. i found cockburn's piece quite interesting because i was not looking for a coherent whole (more below).
> Cockburn 'parachutes' into India (Doug's phrase) and writes an
> impressionistic piece. Since this dovetails perfectly wih everyone's
> preconceived ideas about India, it is hailed as the gospel. Ulhas
> reels off fact after disquieting fact (has been for years, going by
> the archives) and he is dismissed as impressionistic.
everyone's preconceived ideas about india? on LBO? what is that? really, i am not being sarcastic! what is the preconceived idea about india that we LBO members are supposed to have that require such an assiduous battle using facts?
i see cockburn's piece as a presentation of the other side to everyone's preconceived notion of india, in the west, as created by tom friedman (as pointed out by jim devine): the latest success of capitalism where outsourcing and harvard educated economists are carrying out a miracle. add "rising tide" to the argument and its the same old hash all over again.
> As Kuhn and Lakatos have pointed out in another context, cherished
> theories are exceptionally resistant to facts. It takes a 'revolution'
> to sweep them aside.
i guess that should apply more heavily to indian yuppies' and liberalizers, not to mention the hindutva freaks', and their cherished notions, especially when used to gloss over nothing more than materialistic lust. not referring to you here, of course, but the many indian intellectuals and upwardly mobile middle-class (in my experience) who celebrate "liberalization" with language and reasoning not dissimilar to that of reagan...
w.r.t kuhn and lakatos, no reading would be complete without PKF and an understanding of how "new" theories gain a foothold. hint: its not by the power of their reasoning or their empirical/factual basis.
IMHO, referring always to "revolution", "marxism", "CPI/M", etc., is a strawman.
--ravi