AN
UNCERTAIN GLORY: INDIA AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS
Jean
Dreze & Amartya Sen
Published in: 2013,
U.K.
Publisher: Allen
Lane, an imprint of PENGUIN BOOKS.
Hard Cover, 287 Pages
An Uncertain Glory: India
and its contradictions, is a joint work in development economics by two of India’s
leading economists--scholars, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen. It is primarily a
detailed review of the socio- economic conditions prevailing in India till the
year 2013. The title of the book itself is the raison d’etre of the book – in essence it aims to bring out the
multifarious contradictions within India that make it such an interesting
subject of socio-economic studies. The title, An Uncertain Glory, implies that while India has undergone
considerable development in the form of economic and industrial expansion
through the public- private partnership model, it considerably lags behind in a
major area, namely, human development. Divided into a total of nine chapters,
the book presents an in-depth analysis of multiple socio-economic concerns in
our country. The chapters variedly throw light upon poverty, social support,
economic growth and human development, accountability and the lack of it in the
public sector at large, corruption in public life, India’s health care crisis,
the need for impatience for reform in the population and ideas such as
democracy, inequality, public reasoning and the centrality of education in
India. Most importantly, the book analyses growth and development indicators
with an aim to see the results upon the integration of the two. That India is a
‘land of contrasts’ where more often than not, what is preached, is not
practiced, is the basic premise on which the authors have built important areas
in the book where the contrast is most visible and made it comprehensive for
the lay public.
A collection of well-
researched essays providing profound insight, An Uncertain Glory draws data from a vast array of literature and
is lucidly and comprehensibly written. It is free of useless jargon and
prejudices. The text gains traction due to being interspersed with the
concluding observations of eminent scholars such as Ramamchandra Guha, Praful
Bidwai and Pranab Bardhan. It follows a linear narrative structure and takes a
doctrinal approach in looking at the sharp contradictions that have become a
part and parcel of Indian life. Dreze & Sen have widely substantiated their
observations on the multiple dimensions of India’s growth story with
statistical analysis based on empirical data. The book is dotted with anecdotes
revealing Indian contradictions. In one such example, the authors write about
their alarm on finding out that in one of the NTPC run- power plant
headquarters in Uttar Pradesh, a large number of air conditioners were switched
on full blast throughout the day-- even in the deserted lobby of the guest
house, while sweepers for the NTPC, belonging to the Dom community, languished
in shacks without proper electricity just outside the boundary walls of the
headquarters’ campus.
India is home to 111 billionaires (as of 2015) and
363,000,000 people below the poverty line according to official estimates.
(29.5 per cent of India’s population was poor in 2011-12). This is just the
beginning of economic contradictions, the causes and effects of which have been
qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed in An Uncertain Glory. It observes that the idea of India is
paradoxical to the reality of India.
The work is more than food for thought, in fact, a classic in
its own right. It critically examines the historical perspective of public
policy and the current regressive practices followed in India, such as caste-based
discrimination and attitudinal barriers that prevent it from being one of the
forerunners in South Asian politics. The call for integrating growth and
development is seen to be an optimum solution for bringing India onto its much
needed path of progress.
Chapter five of the book, The
Centrality of Education successfully identifies education as the key to the
liberation of our society from the clutches of oppression and exploitation. The
chapter presents in detail the shambles that elementary education has been in,
even after sixty-five years of independence (the book was written in the time
period 2011-12). To quote, “About 20
per cent of Indian children between the ages of 6 and 14 years were not
attending school even in 2005-06, and about 10 per cent of children of that age
group had never been enrolled in any school at all. The neglect is particularly
strong for Indian girls, nearly half of whom were out of school in large parts
of India in the same year.”
India’s shockingly unequal past
records of development, opine Dreze and Sen, are
“making the country look more and more like islands of California in a sea of
sub-Saharan Africa”. Despite several growth
indicators denoting prosperity, most important of them being the Gross Domestic
Product (GDP), (whose number remains to be unsteady), much of India’s
population remains so disadvantaged that social indicators have hardly
improved. The authors opine, “The history of world
development offers few other examples, if any, of an economy growing so fast
for so long with such limited results in terms of reducing human deprivations.”
To that end, An
Uncertain Glory is easily one of the most invaluable social commentaries
made on economic growth, human development, the persistence of inequality,
human rights violation, the success of economic programmes like MNREGA,
educational standards and the dismal condition of public health in India. It is
quite pragmatic and optimistic in dealing with the issues of global and local
poverty, without ignoring the serious consequences that poverty has, and still
continues to bear upon societies and entire nations. Thus, there is both the
acceptance of reality as well as the optimism that India can do far better in
improving the lives of its citizens, that makes this book relevant to academic
and public discourse.
The ability of the authors to avoid playing on age-old
clichés surrounding the underdevelopment of India, and the West’s equation of
underdevelopment to the phenomenon of Orientalism works greatly in the book’s
favour. The book has offered meaningful insight into some of the ongoing debates
within the mould of India’s multicultural diversity. Dreze & Sen measurably
blame the British for reducing the per-capita income growth of India to 0.1.
per cent. They also bring the policies and programmes of the Indian government
under the scanner while examining security threats to India in the form of terrorism.
Dreze & Sen admit that the operational record of public
enterprises in India is most often disastrous. They take an open stand against
the absolute privatization of goods and services as they believe in its
ill-effects, such as environmental degradation and development- induced
displacement. Instead, they advocate the Public- Private Partnership (PPP)
model, with government involvement in healthcare, nutrition, environment
conservation and education for best results. The authors strongly recognize the
need to weed out corruption from public life and make government institutions
more accountable to all their stakeholders. They point out in their analysis
that this will not occur in a fortnight, but gradually and with increased
transparency in the system. The authors have been successful in painting a
picture of the stark realities of an India that has sidelined and ignored its
problems for too long.
An Uncertain Glory is however not devoid of
slight gaps. The ‘trickle- down effect’ of the public distribution system and
the loopholes in the administrative structure that hinders effective
implementation of policies could be more elaborately addressed. The lack of a
detailed evaluation of the performance of the Right To Information Act (RTI),
2005 in the chapters of the book creates a lacuna that deserves attention. This
is especially since this fundamental right is very powerful and successful in
bringing about much- needed administrative reforms. There is also the
unaddressed question of agency responsibility. Dreze and Sen do not raise the
concern as to which agency will take up the responsibility of transforming
government policy to strike a balance between democracy, equity and economic
growth. The impact of disinvestment on the Indian economy could be discussed.
This informative account of the harsh realities of Indian
life is an eye-opener on multiple levels. The authors have championed the cause
of democracy and highlighted the need for strengthening it. They have also been
completely successful in retaining their optimistic spirit and belief in social
change from the beginning of the book to the very end. This social change can
be brought with adherence to B.R. Ambedkar’s thought – to ‘educate, agitate and
organize’ which is sure to restore India on the path to achieving glory.
About the Authors:
Jean Dreze is a Belgium-born Indian
economist who has contributed significantly to development economics and public
economics, with special reference to India. He studied Mathematical Economics at the University
of Essex in the 1980s and did his PhD (theoretical economics of
cost-benefit analysis) at the Indian
Statistical Institute, New Delhi. He
taught at the London School of Economics in the 1980s. His work in India includes issues like
hunger, famine, gender inequality, child health and education, and the NREGA. He had conceptualized and drafted the first version of
the NREGA. He is currently an honorary Professor at the Delhi School of Economics, and Visiting Professor at the Department of Economics,
Ranchi University. He was a member of the National
Advisory Council of India in both first and second term.
He has co-authored another
book with Amartya Sen titled Hunger and
Public Action, on Indian famines. He has lived in India since 1979 and
became an Indian citizen in 2002.
Amartya Sen is an Indian economist and
philosopher, who has made ground-breaking contributions to welfare economics, social
choice theory, economic theory of famines and economic and social justice. He
was awarded the Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998
and Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his work in welfare economics. He is
currently the Thomas W.
Lamont University Professor and
Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard
University. He served as the chancellor of Nalanda University.
Born in 1933 in Manikganj
(present-day Bangladesh), Sen went on to study economics in Presidency College
(now Presidency University), Calcutta, and subsequently studied philosophy in
Trinity College. His major works include The
Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity, The
Idea of Justice, Development as Freedom, Poverty and Famines, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of
Destiny, Peace and Democratic Society. His capabilities
approach focuses on positive
freedom.
Sen's work in the field of development economics has had considerable
influence in the formulation of the Human Development Report. He was granted honorary citizenship of Bangladesh in
1999.
