BOOK REVIEW

JANUARY 11, 2014 vol xlIX no 2 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
38
How Is India Today?
Manjari Katju
India Today: Economy, Politics and Society
by Stuart Corbridge, John Harriss and Craig Jeffrey
(Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press), 2013; pp xiv + 384,
18.99 (pb).
T
he 13 theme-based chapters in
the book are the authors answers
to 13 questions that appear as
chapter titles. Some of these questions
are: How have the poor fared (and
others too) in India?; How did a weak
state promote audacious reform?; Has
Indias democracy been a success?;
Does caste still matter in India?; and
other questions regarding Hindu na-
tionalism, rural dislocations, civil society,
position of Indian women, etc. I am
surprised though that this wide-ranging
work leaves out Indias foreign policy
and the growing economic and political
role the country has assumed in inter-
national relations (the authors very
briey allude to this in the last two pages
of the book).
The questions asked by the authors
(or similar ones) form the core of much
of the current debate on contemporary
Indian politics. And, as the 16th general
elections close in, these discussions have
become more intense and animated.
Opinions are strong as also divided on
the state of poverty, economic growth
and redistribution, effectiveness of gov-
ernment, functioning of democracy, sta-
tus of women, etc. The recent assembly
elections in ve states (2013) have re-
vealed that there has been a general dis-
satisfaction with Congress-led govern-
ments in the states and the centre. The
Congress has come under criticism for
corruption, inefciency and ination.
The Bharatiya Janata Party seems to
have been far more successful in provid-
ing effective government in the states
led by it. It even received tremendous
public backing in these elections.
Status in Poverty
In their attempt to answer the question
How have the poor fared (and others
too)?, the authors look at what has been
called the Great Indian Poverty Debate
as also the alternative facts, gures and
data sets on poverty. According to them,
the focus of many of these data sets has
been extreme income or consumption
poverty rather than relative poverty or
estimates of empowerment or capabili-
ties. A focus on the latter alters the pic-
ture of poverty in signicant ways. The
authors bring out the glaring differences
in poverty as one looks at it from the g-
ures provided by different sources (p 52)
as would be known to observers and
students of the Indian economy. For in-
stance, a comparative look at poverty
gures brings out that the percentage of
people living below the poverty line in
India in 2005 according to the World
Bank was 41.6% (applying the inter-
national poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day).
The Government of India (GoI) gure for
2004-05 was 27.9% or around 300 million
people living below the poverty line.
The poverty gure was much higher
according to the gures reported by the
Asian Development Bank (ADB). As per
the ADB, there were between 622 million
and 740 million living in poverty in
India in 2005 more than double the
GoI gures! Why this discrepancy? It
is because the GoI has historically
dened poverty in much harsher terms
than even the World Bank, let alone
the ADB (p 52).
The different poverty lines, however,
chart a similar course on what the broad
poverty situation in India has been over
time. The gures put together by the
authors reveal that poverty gures in
rural areas peaked around 1970, then
declined gradually until the early 1990s
and then declined more rapidly until the
mid-2000s (pp 56-57). In urban areas,
poverty rose slowly between the early
1950s and 1990 before stabilising and
rising again gradually from around 2000.
The trend as the authors indicate is
towards the urbanisation of poverty
something that matches the global trend
(p 57). According to them, India has
underperformed on the scale of global
poverty reduction trends and the main
reason for this is that growth has been
less effective in India than in many
other countries in pulling people out of
poverty (p 58).
Growth has worked remarkably for
Indias best-off households (p 69). While
saying this, the authors also point out
that the incidence of extreme poverty in
India has fallen signicantly (p 77). Ac-
cording to them, to ght poverty more
successfully what is needed is effective
governance in Indias poorest areas and
the expansion of capabilities of the poorest
households so that they can access reason-
able employment opportunities (p 79).
Economic Reforms
How did a weak state promote eco-
nomic reforms and why was there little
organised resistance to these reforms?
BOOK REVIEW
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 11, 2014 vol xlIX no 2
39
The authors in answer to this question
go with the argument that governments
make audacious economic reforms
when faced with debt (external) crises
and then are pushed by the Bretton
Woods institutions that usually provide
the much-needed nancial backing in
the form of loans to adopt a particular
reform agenda (p 122). In such situations
the different elites may realise the bene-
ts of gradual reform and reorient them-
selves to changes in the hope of positive
returns (p 123). There might also be a
group of reform champions that believes
in microeconomic efciency and inter-
nationalisation (p 128).
According to the authors what helped
was the positive response of many big
business houses to the opportunities that
opened up after the crisis of 1991 (p 127).
What also contributed to the advance-
ment of reform was a process of pro-
vincial Darwinism, as Rob Jenkins puts
it. This process explains the adoption of
pro-business policies by the poorer states
as well, to catch up with their stronger
rivals rather than lose out further in the
economic competition.
The authors argue that Indias demo-
cracy has been a success. They state that
the countrys major democratic institu-
tions have been strengthened. Institu-
tions like the Indian Administrative
Service, the Election Commission and
the Supreme Court have contributed
to effective government and political
stability (p 143). There have been suc-
cesses in the protection of human rights.
Elections have become fairer and there
has emerged a genuine competitive
multi-party system (p 146). Along with
these there has also been an upsurge
of dalit and Other Backward Classes
(OBC) politics. The authors, however, do
add caveats that major problems like
human rights abuses in Kashmir and
against minorities, the lack of intra-
party demo cracy, corruption in the
bureau cracy and the over-reach of the
Supreme Court in matters convention-
ally outside its purview remain (p 147).
Nevertheless, the strengthening of
formal demo cracy according to the
authors has had positive implications
for substantive guarantees of personal
freedoms and rights.
Substantive democracy in the view of
the authors did not see much growth be-
tween 1947 and 1990 except in a few
states like Kerala (p 151). Since 1990
strong movements towards substantive
democratisation occurred with the rise
of dalit politics in states like Uttar
Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, and the ad-
dressing of issues of the poor including
those of dalits in Madhya Pradesh. How-
ever, these at best led to only partial
achievements in substantive democrati-
sation (p 153). The upsurge of dalits in
electoral politics to a large extent derad-
icalised low-caste assertion and has
failed to address issues, which, if dealt
with, would have had far-reaching ben-
ets for the poor, such as with land re-
distribution or minimum wages (p 154).
Some concrete welfare policies were
put on rails like the National Rural
Employment Guarantee Scheme and the
Right to Information Act by the Congress-
led government at the centre after 2004.
However, these initiatives were part of
sustained public campaigns and were
made into laws under pressure of grass-
root movements (pp 155-56).
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BOOK REVIEW
JANUARY 11, 2014 vol xlIX no 2 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
40
The authors conclude that, overall, Indias
democracy has been a success. Compar-
ing Indias record with countries in dis-
tant Latin America or closer to home
south Asia brings out the achievements of
the democratic project in India clearly.
In-depth Work
India Today is a comprehensive, probing
and in-depth work by scholars who have
been involved with questions of Indian
political economy, politics and society
for several years. This experience of
scholarship is clearly visible in this en-
gagingly written work. It builds on some
of the issues Stuart Corbridge and John
Harriss (two of the authors) raised in
their earlier equally engaging work called
Reinventing India: Economic Liberali-
zation, Hindu Nationalism and Popular
Democracy (2000).
Based on their own eldwork and a
thorough analysis of the extensive
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Jadhav, Narendra, ed. (2013); Ambedkar Writes
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South Asia (New Delhi: Pentagon Press) in
association with Institute for Defence Studies
and Analyses, New Delhi, pp xxii + 332, Rs 995.
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Noorani, A G (2013); The Destruction of Hyderabad
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Books Received
research literature, the authors raise
critical questions facing the country in
present times. They have tried to answer
these questions and though one might
disagree with their answers, one has to
say that these answers enrich the debate
on how India has fared on issues of poli-
tics, economy and society. As such, their
work would be useful to scholars and
students of Indian politics, sociology,
economics and comparative politics. It
would also appeal to general readers in-
terested in these questions because of its
lucid style and comprehensive analysis.
The work has an added value as a source-
book because of an exhaustive biblio-
graphy in the end of course these are
works that the authors have referred
to that brings together in one place
important research studies on questions
of democracy, caste, women, Hindu
nationalism, etc, and would help those
starting their research on Indian issues.
The book, as I said in the beginning,
could have included in some detail
the authors view on Indias foreign
relations, which in recent years have
assumed a crucial position in global
politics because of the countrys status
as a successful democracy (and because
of the size of its economy). India has
redened and reworked its earlier non-
aligned but aligned position in world
affairs. The way this dynamics is play-
ing out in matters relating to China,
Russia, Iran, United States and African
and Latin American countries is very
interesting and one cannot afford to
miss it if one is talking about India
Today. This would have added one
more interesting question to the list that
the authors have taken up.
Manjari Katju (mkatju@gmail.com) teaches
Political Science at the University of
Hyderabad.