I had the
wonderful opportunity to listen to my former professor Amartya Sen at the World Bank who attempted
to answer this very pertinent question in the minds of many today. The fundamental question at the core is
why is it that while we rate democracy as the better form of government, it is
single party ruled China that has been more successful at bringing more people
out of poverty than democratic India? The implications for India are clear; investing in education and health for all its citizens is the best solution for long term growth.
Professor
Sen argues that it is not the nature of government that is the main factor in
China’s success but its investment in health and education that provided fuel
to its explosive growth. India he said has under-invested in these key areas
and hence its economic growth is poorly supported by quality human capital. Professor
Sen was critical of the suggestion that countries could grow economically first
and then invest in education later saying that it was the reverse that is true.
He supported his claim bringing historical evidence of Japan’s rapid growth since the
second decade of the
20st century being driven by its investment in health and
education after the Meiji restoration on the 1868. More recently, similar
investment by Korea and the South East Asian countries provided impetus to
economic growth in these countries.
I wanted to see the evidence first hand and looked at the data.
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The case of health is no different. In the case of life expectancy, once again India’s life expectancy in 2011 is below what it was in China’s in 1990 (fig-2). Today India’s life expectancy is 11 years below that of China.
These data supports Amartya Sen’s
basic premise that India’s low literacy rates and poor health outcomes as
compared to China’s may explain a big part of the disparity in development
between the two countries.
You can see the entire talk on the
World Bank website http://live.worldbank.org/china-ahead-india-amartya-sen.
The message for policy makers to India is clear. There are no
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Interestingly, another of Harvard’s economists Dani Rodrik has a different take on this issue which he has explained on his blog, but that is a discussion for another day.