|
|
|
August 18, 2002
REVIEW: Developing South Asia
THE book under review contains nine essays contributed by Meghnad Desai, Paul Streeten, Adeel Malik, Shahid Javed Burki, Francis Stewart, Taimur Hyat, Rehman Sobhan, Nurul Islam, M.S. Swaminathan, Gustav Ranis, Rashid Naseem, and Arjun Sengupta. According to the editor, Dr Khadija Haq, “Every essay in the volume echoes Haq’s (M) ideas and concerns ....” The volume, therefore, reflects the yet-to-be accomplished mission of the visionary economist Dr Mahhub ul Haq to whom the volume is dedicated. One would have liked to see a separate page displaying the dedication prominently.
Paul Streeten’s and Adeel Malik’s brilliant depiction of the South Asian scene in their “Asian drama revisited” not only shows the mirror to all the complacent and smug segments of society. It also holds the beneficiary segments responsible for the human disaster in South Asia that they can either not see or refuse to see.
The authors elucidate the meaning of Myrdal’s “soft” state which many either misunderstand or dispute unnecessarily. A soft state is ineffective in bringing about socio-economic uplift. Streeten & Malik provide the general policy direction which alone would propel South Asia out of the underdeveloped trajectory it will otherwise keep orbiting in. The presence of small-property owning farmers is a precondition for industrialization and thereby growth and development. This is the single most important distinction between those aspiring for growth and development through tailor-made solutions as compared to those who wish to implant imported ones based on the neo-classical school.
Dr Mahbub ul Haq was one of those economists who distinguished between the economic growth model and the human development model. But not all those who jumped on to his popular and prestigious bandwagon the world over quite identify with the core of Dr Haq’s thought. So, while Nurul Islam focuses on “Agricultural development strategies in Asia”, his emphasis too is on enhancing agricultural growth and land productivity which he believes will contribute to poverty reduction.
To this extent, it is a departure from the mission of Dr Mahbub ul Haq who wanted to prove that economic growth by itself cannot alleviate poverty. As Dr Khadija Haq puts it succinctly, “A link between growth and human lives has to be created consciously through deliberate public policy, such as public spending on social services, and fiscal policy to redistribute income and assets.”
So, while spending on social services has been accepted in theory by all and sundry, it is the redistribution of income and assets that has not even reached the lips of policy-makers yet. Many conservative scholars either mention it in passing or between the lines. Some even deemphasize it. So, while Streeten & Malik highlight this aspect, they appear to be about the only ones doing so fearlessly in this volume.
Swaminathan’s “The persistence of poverty despite the green revolution” also focuses on yields enhancement and global trade which can keep the agricultural policies skewed in favour of growth as an end in itself.
Nurul Islam mentions the need for land reforms in Pakistan for reasons of both efficiency and equity. He further explains that this essential redistribution of land has been delayed in Pakistan mainly because of the “softness” of the state. However, the thrust of his essay is mainly on the provision of inputs on which valuable information is provided. Therefore the essay is more likely to reinforce the policy makers’ traditional predisposition when scholarly effort should be attempting to shatter and to revolutionize it.
Swaminathan points out the importance of employment-intensive small-scale farming and industrial enterprises and the bane of jobless/”joyless” growth. But the context in which he mentions it is not likely to shift policy emphasis in that direction in all South Asian countries.
While there is much poverty-lamentation now in the country, there is a definite need to sway policy in the direction of rooting out the menace and not merely alleviating it. The fact is that more poverty is generated through the neo-classical policy approach that continues unabated.
The onslaught of the dependency school countered by the neo- classical counterrevolution finally led to an accommodation of the third world concerns in the form of new growth (endogenous) theory which calls for an emphasis on growth as well as on human capital development through public policy. The theory is, however, rooted in the neo-classical tradition.
This is where the emphasis in Gustav Ranis & Rashid Naseem comes from in their comparison of development in East and South Asia. Even though land reforms, primacy of agriculture, and the link between agriculture and industry remain at the heart of the development of China, South Korea, and Taiwan studied by Ranis & Naseem, their essay focuses on liberalization and outward- orientation to explain their miraculous growth.
While these factors accounted for their rapid growth in a later stage of development, the groundwork done earlier needs to be emphasized equally. After all it provided the foundation on which a liberalizing superstructure was erected. Otherwise, it is only a part of the story told of little significance for countries that have yet to put an institutional and an attitudinal infrastructure in place.
Having said that, Ranis & Naseem touch upon interesting correlations between organic nationalism, natural resource endowments, access to foreign capital and the policy choices available to a country. These provide interesting areas for research.
If the right to development is a human right as brought out very well by Arjun Sengupta, then development would also require social, civil, and political rights. Rehman Sobhan dwells on South Asia’s crisis of governance and argues against the military option as a possible solution. Streeten & Malik, on the other hand, cannot show a link between democracy and growth and argue in favour of an economic democracy to make a political democracy viable.
Economic democracy calls for a redistribution of assets where they are concentrated and thereby hinder economic, social, and political development. This should feature explicitly and not implicitly as a near-term objective as we work towards the longer-term goal of regional harmony visualized by Meghnad Desai and the late Dr Mahbub ul Haq. The book comes as a reminder that Haq’s great intellectual contribution could light up the dismal science of economics for the third world in both theory and practice for all times to come.
The South Asian challenge
Edited by Khadija Haq Oxford University Press, 5 Bangalore Town, Sharae Faisal, Karachi-75350 Tel: 021-4529025
Email: ouppak@theoffice.net
ISBN 0-19-579647 332pp. Rs595
|
|
|
|
