Are hardly remarkable figures -- pretty much most (all?) of East Asia trumps those numbers, even Indonesia (with lower average IMR in 1999, but shorter life expectancy at birth, and much higher adult (15+) literacy rates)
And the overall IMR of 65 suggests there would be areas/groups for which it could be as high as double that, and others where it would be be well below 10.
Which, I thought -- aesthetics of writing and editing aside -- was Cockburn's point: the inequities?
I'm afraid I don't quite understand what the controversy is all about. The URL from Doug pointed to Part 3 of 3 -- about the suicides which Cockburn related, second-hand (through his host), to certain policies, and a swipe at Niall Ferguson who deserves it.
So, well, those same policies have seen parts of India boom (as did colonial policies). That some parts are not booming -- is that so remarkable that it should result in so much railing against Cockburn (and others)? And I thought the bit about the Indian 'masses' exercising their democracy -- well, India has always been an inspiration on that score, proving time and again that illiteracy is no impediment to the democratic exercise of voting power (my favourite here has always been EP Thompson's essay about the crowd turning their backs on Indira Gandhi at an election campaign rally).
I read Cockburn's piece as telling one part of the story. I thought it fair enough, given that the other part of the story is being told in plenty of other writings and reports. One is hardly starved for copy on how well India is doing!
Must anyone wishing to write a story about some aspect of any country rehearse everything about that country before getting down to the story? If so, we should all be protesting about the largely negative stories coming out of Iraq -- since obviously there are people and groups who have done well/better.
Kuhn & Lakatos -- well, at least the Kuhn of Structure -- it's not about facts, but paradigms. And it'd then be an illegitimate move to righteously suggest that the other party ignores the facts, while not disclosing one's paradigm, no? Don't even go there.
kj