Amartya Sen gave the following speech, comparing Indian and China, some 15 years ago. How does it hold up?
China and India are much in the news right now. The attention that they get these days in the West is partly concerned with some kind of a fear that they might take over jobs and work from Europeans and Americans. I shall not address that worry in particular, though I believe it to be largely misguided.
Clearly, Americans did not agree. 9 years after Sen said this, they elected Donald Trump. It is noteworthy that Biden too is promising that China won't overtake America on his watch. However, as Dilip Hiro points out- this is an unlikely outcome.
Still, the fact remains, the US is big enough to reserve a lot of high value adding activity for domestic producers. It doesn't have to turn into a low wage satellite of China.
Expansion of economic connections hardly ever hurt countries that have the privilege of being already ahead in education, training and socially supportive facilities.
Yet Holland fell behind Britain over the course of the long eighteenth century. Bengal was ahead of most parts of India when Sen was born. It has fallen behind many other parts of India because of an 'expansion of economic connections'. What determines whether you stay ahead or fall behind is what you do to take advantage of these improved connections. Sen's view is that there is some automatic mechanism which turns 'education and socially supportive facilities' into economic advancement. This is not the case. What matters is how 'education' and 'social support' is used. China used both wisely. India preferred to pamper non-STEM subject shitheads at places like JNU and Nalanda. It chose to bribe the poor rather than lift them out of poverty by making them more productive. The consequences of Sen-tentious policies are clearly observable. China has pretty much ended poverty and is challenging the US for the top spot. India, battered by COVID, may have to accept that it will never climb out of a lower 'middle income trap'.
Whatever readjustment of trading pattern that the emergence and expansion of new economies may lead to need not worsen the situation of the pre-existing economic powers. Indeed, if these established economic giants (as Germany certainly is) play their cards well and choose economic and social policies that take note of the new economic realities, rather than trying to stick dogmatically to old patterns of trade, there can be much benefit from the economic opportunities of gainful exchange generated by the rapid development of newly industrializing countries, like China and India.
Germany certainly benefitted because its 'mittelstand' could export capital goods to China thanks to its going into the Euro undervalued and because of its own Growth and Stability pact with Labour- i.e. cost push inflation was contained- as well as interventions in the Housing market, etc. However, as Merkel is currently lamenting, it did not maintain strategic spare capacity in some vital areas- e.g. pharma.
I will, however, concentrate in this speech on some comparative analysis of what is happening in China and India today, seen in the perspective of the people of these countries themselves and the history of their interrelations over the last two thousand years.
This is foolish. There was no 'interrelation' save of a religious sort which ceased long ago after India came under Muslim rule. After that, the British Raj in India permitted Indian military resources to project force in China which benefitted a few Parsi and mercantile Hindu castes. But this had no wider effect whatsoever.
I begin with citing a question that was asked by a Chinese about India: Is there anyone in any part of India who does not admire China?
The Chinese stopped asking any such question more than a thousand years ago. Why bring up the subject at this late hour?
That question could well be asked today given the interest that economic and social achievements of China currently generate in India. The question, however, was actually asked by Yi Jing (or, I-Ching, as the name is sometimes spelt) in the seventh century, on his return to China after spending ten years in India. Yi Jing was one of many Buddhist scholars in the first millennium who spent a decade or more in India. The first Chinese scholar to write an elaborate account of his visit to India was Faxian [Fa-Hsien], who came to India on the di cult land route via Khotan in Central Asia, in 401 AD. After ten active years in India, Faxian returned by sea, sailing from the mouth of the Ganges or Hooghly (not far from present-day Calcutta). Faxian was also particularly interested in studying arrangements for public health care and the art of prolonging life. This was, in fact, a persistent subject of interest for visiting Buddhist scholars from China.
Some Chinese Christians also went to Baghdad to study Nestorian Christianity. They introduced paper making- which was very useful. It wasn't till the second half of the Nineteenth Century that, under British auspices, some Chinese settled in Sen's native Bengal. Only at that time did Chinese techniques of paper-making etc spread in India. There are only two or three Chinese innovations which found their way to the subcontinent. The lack of interconnection between these two civilizations is remarkable.
It is also not implausible to argue that Buddha's own interest in morbidity, disability and mortality, which initially motivated young Gautama to leave his princely home in search of enlightenment (the word Buddha means `enlightened') gave the subject of public health a rather special status and standing in Buddhist scholarship.
But the religion disappeared in India many centuries ago- thanks to invaders of a particular Faith.
In the reverse direction too, hundreds of Indian scholars- no 'scholars' came, only monks- came to China between the First century and the eleventh. Many of them settled there, and were engaged in a variety of activities, varying from translating Sanskrit documents into Chinese to working on mathematics and science
while being monks. Later, the Jesuits turned up and did have quite a big effect on Europe by their research. At one time, they had considerable influence in China.
. An Indian astronomer called Gautama even became the president of the Board of Astronomy in China in the eighth century.
This is misleading. Gautama was born in China though an ancestor may have come from India- but, at that time, this would have included some parts of South East Asia
Although Yi Jing might have been a little rash in doubting that any seventh-century Indian could have failed to admire China, the mutual viewing of each other was indeed a significant feature of the history of the two countries.
But ceased to be so many centuries ago.
Sino-Indian cultural relations constitute an oddly neglected part of the heritage of the two countries.
Oddly? The thing ceased to exist a thousand years ago!
The neglect is strange not only because of the light that these relations throw on the nature and evolution of Chinese and Indian civilizations (covering a large fraction of humanity), but also because of what it can tell us on such general subjects of contemporary contention as the history of `globalization' (how it has been a creative force) and the alleged `clash of civilizations' (on which, as it happens, more nonsense is said these days than on almost any other subject).
Getting conquered by Muslim Turks puts an end to 'cultural relations'. It also put an end to a Buddhist Civilization in India.
Yi Jing's seventh-century question about the general admiration for China in India, with which I began, seemed to many of us, in the second half of the twentieth century, to be extra-ordinarily relevant to our times.
This cretin thought setting up an International University in some rural shithole in Bihar was a good idea. Things which were 'extraordinarily' relevant to Sen, turned out to be wholly irrelevant for everybody else.
Watching from the subcontinent, the emergence of post-revolutionary China appeared to millions of Indians to be the trail-blazing contemporary event, pointing the way to the future.
Nope. That the trail-blazing event was the Bolshevik Revolution. A Bengali, M.N Roy, was tasked with sparking off a similar revolution in China in the Twenties. He turned out to be utterly useless. He ran back to India knowing that a British jail cell would be safer than a Stalinist Gulag. During the Second World War, the guy kept begging the Viceroy for a 'subsidy'.
As the early reports of massive gains in living conditions (including life expectancy) in China became widely discussed in India, the comparative picture formed the basis of one line of persistent criticism of Indian public policy in general and its comparative neglect of basic education and basic health care in particular.
Did these cunts actually go out to the villages and set up schools and so forth? Nope; they just went on criticizing- preferably from the comfort of an Ivy League campus. Meanwhile, the RSS did set up schools and voluntary Clinics and so forth. That's why India is now ruled by a RSS man from a very humble background. Meanwhile Oxbridge trained Commies are remembered only for the harm they did to the Indian economy.
Even though this criticism was not very successful in getting Social attention until very recently,
because only Sonia Gandhi was foreign enough to think Sen-tentious academics weren't virtue signaling cretins
it has been an important part of the intellectual discontent in India over many decades. Since 1979, China has carried through market-oriented economic reforms in a massive scale, with tremendous success in some fields,
some fields? All fields.
such as raising rates of economic growth. This too has not been without impact on India. There is little doubt that India's economic liberalization, starting in 1992, was directly influenced by China's early success in that direction.
Edwin Lim, the World Bank official who helped the Chinese in the Eighties, came to India around then. He discovered that it paid better for academics and 'activists' to block Indian economic growth because they could get funds from International Foundations. Thus 'incentive compatibility' was lacking for proper economic policies based on pure mimetics- not Sen-tentious shite.
The Indian reforms have been relatively less extensive so far,
they were blocked by Sen-tentious cretins- though to be fair, the Commies were worse.
though things are changing quickly, but a basic problem is the continued underdevelopment of social opportunities in India, compared with those in China, especially in the field of school education.
Why? Teachers in Government Schools count the votes. Thus they can't be sacked even if they don't show up for work. Thanks to cretins like Sen, the private sector provision of Education and Health faces high compliance costs. These can be evaded only if Schools and Hospitals are run by thugs. Sen-tentious policies can't prevent development sponsored by thugs. Stabbing the Government inspector is as effective as, Communist style, shooting Teachers who don't turn up for work.
Indeed, it is often not adequately recognised how much the Chinese economic performance in the `post-reform' period has benefited from earlier - distinctly `pre-reform' - expansions of social opportunities (especially in basic education, but also in epidemiology and land reform).
But the clinching factor was the one child policy and the internal passport system. This meant the benefits of development were reaped by those who actually developed themselves. Sen, however, comes from a long line of bien pensant Bengalis who believed that the cake should be divided up fairly before it was baked.
Indian higher education, however, is quite extensive (India still has many more University educated persons, even in absolute numbers, than China does),
but it is shit. Unlike China, India thought PhDs in shite subjects- including Sen-tentious Economics- raised productivity. They also thought that giving a guy an Engineering degree turned him into an engineer even if he couldn't speak English or tell a spanner from a spade.
and its technical training in high technology (from informational analysis to nuclear physics and biochemistry) is well developed,
because Indian planners forgot to forget to fuck up the associated industries before they got off the ground. Sad.
which is reflected in India's success in some high-tech sectors in the world economy (such as computer programming and software, information technology, and pharmaceuticals).
Why hasn't the Govt. been able to fuck up these fields? The answer is that it knows it will face a fiscal and balance of payments crisis if it does so. As happened in 1992, the country would face bankruptcy- i.e. it would have to reform or else simply go under.
This has made Indian economic performance quite impressive seen in comparative terms with the rest of the world, but it has still not allowed India to have an economic expansion as fast as China.
Because of stupid, paternalistic, Land and Labor and umpteen other Laws, not to mention the pervasive 'Inspector Raj'.
Developing a wider base of basic education
which involves tackling the vested interests of Trade Unions- in particular those of Government teachers
and achieving a further reduction of bureaucratic barriers
which involves tackling the vested interests of the bureaucracy which is deeply corrupt
can make important contributions to making the Indian development even more rapid than it is now.
India could simply free everything up, privatize schools etc, and just use digital cash transfers to cushion the shakeout effect.
There is, however, a danger that in trying to identify what India can learn from China, and also the converse (on which more presently), too much focus may be put on the outstanding nature of China's rates of economic growth.
Tardean mimetics means imitating a guy similar to yourself who is doing better. Development is about removing barriers to Tardean mimetics not 'identifying what x can learn from y' and then worrying that 'too much focus' may be given to things which one holds to be vulgar or repugnant.
Scepticism about growth per se is not new, neither in China, nor in India. One can even interpret, in that line, the Chinese writer Wang An-Shah's doubts, expressed in the eleventh century, in his poem, Casual Inspirations on a Cold Mountain: Having one is to have two, Having three is to have four, One, two,three, four, and five, Having them all, what does it really matter? Despite these doubts, Wang (a Buddhist administrator in Sung China) worked hard, as a leading reformer, to improve people's lives in ways that goes beyond merely `having' more and more of ordinary things, and concentrating instead on achievements that `really matter.'
Sen is speaking of Wang Anshi who did compose 20 poems in the 'Cold Mountain' style. He made the mistake of lending to farmers in an unsustainable manner and was forced out of office during a famine. Fiscal policy can't be about fostering 'capabilities'. It has to be about balancing the books. During a food availability deficit, you have to have money in the treasury to buy food from other areas. If you have leant out all your money, then the borrowers starve along with everybody else.
Sen, typically, doesn't get the important economic fact about the poet he quotes.
In this light, it is interesting to examine the comparative picture in China and India - and what each can learn from the other - about things that do `really matter,' in particular what Yi Jing called the art of `prolonging life.'
through alchemy
This is indeed a good focus for some useful comparisons. As I mentioned earlier, Faxian, Yi Jing and other early visitors from China to India were particularly interested in health care, treating diseases, and more generally in the `art of prolonging life.'
No kidding! The Emperor wanted to be immortal- not by doing good deeds and winning renown- but by not actually dying.
Not only has this been one of the historical areas of comparative interest in China and India, but also life expectancy and health are widely recognised these days as good general indicators of comparative success.
Ceteris paribus, not being dead or very very ill is considered to be better than being dead or at death's door. What an amazing discovery!
The most extensive championing of this perspective can be found in the series of yearly reports called Human Development Reports produced by the United Nations. So what is the comparative story in this field in the comparative picture of India and China? In the middle of the twentieth century, post-revolution China and newly independent India had about the same life expectancy at birth, less than 40 years or so. But the Chinese leaders were immediately more successful in expanding health care and life expectancy at birth than their sleepy Indian counterparts were.
Why? Because they didn't have a useless Planning Commission dominated by Bengali statisticians. They were prepared to sack or shoot teachers who didn't teach and Doctors who ran away from their assigned Clinics. In India, as Jack Prager- an actual Medical Doctor- records, there is no constituency for expanding educational or health budgets because voters can see for themselves that teachers don't teach and Doctors don't live where they are supposed to live. They can use their 'pull' to get appointments and will use the courts to delay being terminated from employment. In other words, they keep getting paid without doing any work.
By the time the economic reforms were introduced in China in 1979, China had a lead of 14 years or more over India, with the Chinese life expectancy at birth at 68 years while the Indian was less than 54.
Why? Unlike China, which has only a very small proportion of culturally non-Han peoples, India has very large culturally non-Hindu populations. The Caste Hindu is comparable to the Han Chinese. Thrift, sobriety, enterprise etc. are values both share. Mimetic effects can broadcast these values- but only if artificial barriers to mimetics are removed.
China did, in fact, experience during this period a disastrous famine, which is estimated to have killed between 23 and 30 million people, whereas India has not experienced any such famine since its independence from British rule in 1947.
But Bangladesh did- though it was a Democracy with a Free Press. Sen keeps pretending that Democracy has some magical power against Famine. Yet, on two occasions, during Sen's own lifetime, popularly elected Governments in Bengal presided over horrendous Famines.
I have discussed elsewhere that the Chinese famine was strongly linked with a lack of democracy.
But in Bengal, the formation of an elected Government has been associated with the worsening of a food availability deficit by corrupt politicians who, however, hold power Democratically.
Even when people were dying by tens of millions each year, the mistaken policies of the so-called Great Leap Forward were not corrected for three years. The government was immune from criticism, since there were no opposition parties, no free elections, no independent newspapers and media, and no free speech.
Mujibur Rehman was so immune to criticism he scrapped Democracy. But he wasn't immune to a bullet. If some patriot had simply shot Mao, or poisoned his soup, there would have been no big Chinese famine.
In contrast, it is not hard to see why there have been no famines in India since independence.
Bengalis don't run things. If people start dying of starvation, President's rule will be declared and the Army will be sent in to set up relief camps.
No democratic government can expect to get re-elected after a famine,
Nonsense! Shurawardy did get re-elected. Mujib too would have been re-elected after he lifted the Emergency- if not immediately then, like Indira, soon enough.
and no democratic government can easily face an independent media and the criticism of opposition parties in a famine-ravaged country.
Rubbish! All the Government has to do is make a scapegoat of some mercantile minority community. Throw in some ethnic cleansing, and you get re-elected by a a landslide. As for the 'free Press', beat a few reporters and threaten a couple of Editors and see how quickly they fold.
However, the working of democracy, which is almost effortlessly effective in preventing famines
except in Bengal if elected Bengalis are running things
, is far less immediate in politicizing regular but nonextreme undernourishment and ill health.
Sen was still in India when the Commies tried to make hunger a big issue in Bengal. They were ignored. Bengalis believed Bengal was over-populated. They thought it a good thing if ten percent of the population simply starved to death. Mao justified the Famine in the same manner. He also offered Chinese women to Kissinger. Perhaps the Americans had some use for this baby making machines.
The extensive rewards of political freedom and democracy depend very much on the vigor with which it is practised.
The rewards of any activity depend on the activity actually being performed. Vigor means effort. Reward is proportionate to effort. Again, we are stunned by Sen's great discovery.
As far as regular mortality rates are concerned, India has tended to obtain much less - at least until recently - from the opportunity offered by democratic politics
because what Sen sees as opportunity is viewed by the public as mere 'opportunism'- e.g. the Commies making a campaigning issue out of hunger in a Bengal where the median voter was bleakly Malthusian.
than China has been able to get from the political commitment of its authoritarian rulers (including Mao's own general dedication to enhancing living conditions, despite the big policy mistakes he made during the famine). For the decades preceding economic reforms in China in 1979, the trend rate of expansion of life expectancy there (including all the famine years) was more than twice as fast as that in India.
China's famine probably represented a Darwinian 'shake out'. The truth is there was probably more unreported infanticide which meant that official figures are inflated. One reason Cuba had very good statistics in this respect- apart from the fact that Cuba exports Medical Services in order to pay its way- is because there are a lot of suspicious looking 'late-term' miscarriages. Doctors and Public Health officials massage the figures to avoid getting a bullet in the back of the head.
I must now continue the comparative story beyond 1979. Over the last two decades China has had an altogether exceptional record of rapid economic growth. The Indian economy has grown rapidly too, but not at all as fast as the Chinese. But how have they fared in terms of promoting life expectancy? Here we run into an odd conundrum. Despite China's much faster rate of growth since the economic reforms, the rate of expansion of life expectancy in India has been about three times as fast, on the average, as that in China.
There is no fucking conundrum here. It is obvious that there are diminishing returns here because senescence is written into our genes. Once you have life expectancy of 70, it is very difficult to push the dial. The other thing is affluence reduces life expectancy- at least initially. Cuban health improved during the 'famine' because people ate less and took more exercise and couldn't smoke or drink as much.
China's life expectancy, which is now about 71 years, compares with India's of 64 years, and the life-expectancy gap in favor of China, which was 14 years before the Chinese reforms, has now been halved to only 7 years.
It is now 5 years. But COVID might change that.
Note must, however, be taken of the fact that it gets increasingly harder to expand life expectancy further as the absolute level rises, and it could be argued that perhaps China has now reached a level where further expansion would be very diffcult. But that reading is hard to sustain. At the time of economic reforms, when China had a life expectancy of about 68 years, the Indian state of Kerala had a slightly lower life expectancy - around 67 years. By now, however, Kerala's life expectancy is estimated to be around 76 years, which is very considerably above China's 71.
Now they are about level. Kerala, like Cuba, exports medical services. That is why it is an outlier.
While the Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai can outmatch the state of Kerala, nearly all Chinese provinces have much lower life expectancy than Kerala. Indeed, if we look at specific points of vulnerability, infant mortality rate in China has fallen very slowly since the economic reforms (almost none at all in the last decade), whereas it has continued to fall very sharply in Kerala. While Kerala had roughly the same infant mortality rate as China - 37 per thousand - at the time of the Chinese reforms, Kerala's present rate of 10 per thousand is only a third of the Chinese infant mortality rate of 30 per thousand (where it has stagnated over the last decade).
Kerala, thanks to free treatment of congenital heart defects, is now around 7 while China is at about 10. Obviously, this is because both underwent demographic transition and are ageing societies. India's is about 32 because backward States still have above replacement fertility.
Does this indicate that economic growth does not help to enhance life expectancy?
No.
There is nothing to suggest this; economic growth does contribute to the enhancing of living conditions, including longevity. However, as China's own pre-reform success shows, other factors, such as public policy of health care and educational expansion, can also make a radical difference.
No. What made a dramatic difference was the one child policy and the Hukou passport system.
But there is considerable complexity in the experience of China since the economic reforms of 1979.
No there isn't. The thing is as clear as daylight. The Chinese imitated their more successful neighbors. Most Indians weren't allowed to. That's why Bangladesh may overtake India in per capita terms. Getting rural girls into big big factory dormitories is the only solution to Malthusian agricultural involution.
There is clearly some diffculty with the `reach' of the benefits of economic reform in China, despite its astounding rate of economic growth.
It is now obvious that China did the sensible thing. First it grew the economy by concentrating on infrastructure and supply side bottlenecks. Then, once it could afford to do so, it moved the very poor out of shitty conditions by actually physically moving them from mountain tops into proper apartment buildings with electricity and running water and all the mod cons.
Sen-tentious economists prefer to divide up a theoretical cake before anything is baked.
There are three distinct problems of `reach' here. First, even within the economic field, the poverty-removing character of Chinese economic expansion was much sharper in the early post-reform period than it is today.
No. Then and now, China did smart things which helped the average chap. Only when it got hung up on redistribution and fucking over the 'reactionary' elements did it do stupid shite. India, for highly moral and mathematical reasons, did stupid shit. It still has too many bien pensant activists and academics ready to block Development where ever the thing rears its vulgar head.
While the early reforms showed an astonishing jump in rural production and incomes,
because there was no Civil or other War.
from the late 1980s the focus of growth has been much more urban,
The Chinese, like the Soviets, ensured their Cities didn't become Calcutta level shitty by tightly controlling migration and according much lower entitlements to migrant workers.
largely related to increasing global integration of the China's industrial economy. It cannot, of course, be doubted that this global integration and the related expansion of urban incomes have brought many rewards to the Chinese people. And yet the poverty-reducing character of Chinese economic growth, while still quite firm, has relatively slackened.
Because you have to bake the cake before worrying about the fairness of how it is sliced up.
Furthermore, there has been a big surge in Chinese economic inequality, which is brought out by many empirical studies.
Higher inequality is good provided people are free to pursue Tardean mimetic targets.
However, China's slow growth in life expectancy and stagnation in infant mortality are not only the result of the worsening reach of its economic growth. It also relates to the social and political reach of the reforms. So, the second factor to note is that along with the political change that ushered in the economic reforms came a slackened social commitment to public health care.
The clear lesson, 15 years later is 'fuck social commitment to public health care'. Increase the resource base. Tell Amartya Sen and his ilk to fuck off. Development only happens when Development Economists are ignored. Marx said 'to each according to his contribution'. Let people contribute more by making sure they are rewarded for contributing. Disintermediate virtue signaling gobshites.
It led, in particular, to the eschewal of the automatic and free health insurance provided, before the reforms, by the state, or the collectives or cooperatives in rural areas, which also poured resources directly into public health care.
Free means shitty. It is better to pay for things you need. Otherwise they won't exist when you need them.
There was now a need to buy a private health insurance at one's own cost (except when provided by the employer, which happens only in a small minority of cases). Interestingly, this significantly retrograde movement in the coverage of health care received little public resistance - as it undoubtedly would have met in any multi-party democracy like India.
Because 'opportunistic' virtue signaling isn't rewarded by gaining corrupt rents. However, if Indian Governments sternly curb nuisances created by opportunistic politicians creating 'rent a mob' mass movements, then they would be re-elected. Indira would have been re-elected but for 'forcible sterilization'. North Indians don't ask for much but they do ask the Government to keep its paws off their testicles.
It is very hard to think that an established public facility of great value to people
but China's rise shows free health care is shitty health care. Having to rely on a shitty vital service is of great harm to people.
could be dispensed so easily in a country where the opposition had an effective voice.
The opposition, in Obama's America, had an effective voice. That's how come rich America doesn't have what parts of poor, poor, India does have. But America is still where those poor Indians would rather live.
The denial of that facility certainly has had a role in the slowing down of the progress of longevity.
No. It had a role in increasing longevity. That is what the figures say.
Third, democracy also makes a direct contribution to health care in bringing social failures into public scrutiny.
No. Indian people know why the Public Health and Education System is dysfunctional in their locality. They also understand that reform is politically and legally infeasible. So they prefer to let these things wither on the vine while paying for education and health care wherever possible.
India's health services are quite terrible - I have discussed how defective they are in my joint books with Jean Drèze, in particular in India: Development and Participation (published in Acceptance Speech 21 2002), and quite recently, I had the dubious privilege of presenting in a news interview in India the depressing findings of the first health report of the Pratichi Trust (a trust I was privileged to set up with the Nobel money that came my way some years ago).
Sen & Dreze wrote worthless shite. Jack Prager, an actual Doctor, has disclosed the reality and how to fix it. But nobody listens to Prager. Instead, Bengali cretins will continue to get Nobel Prizes for RCT or other arcane Statistical work which appears 'counter-intuitive' because it is methodologically crap.
But the possibility of such intense criticism is, of course, also a social opportunity to make amends.
This cretin, thinks intensely criticizing things has a magical effect. I intensely criticize the economy and the environment on a regular basis. This hasn't helped me any.
Indeed, the persistent reporting of the dreadful state of Indian health services is, ultimately, a source of India's dynamic strength.
Sen thinks he has made India stronger by 'persistently reporting' that it is a shithole ruled by Fascists.
The informational and incentive roles of democracy, working mainly through open public discussion, can be pivotally important for the reach of public policy.
Sen believes that saying 'Oi, people are starving' when everybody can see this is so is somehow helpful. It isn't.
Anyway, when Sen first got into this game back in the Seventies, you had dusky Economists pretending their shithole countries were actually ahead of America. Cuba, of course, was paradise. The problem with this wonderful discovery was that those dusky Economists showed a high propensity to remain in the West rather than go back home- or to Cuba.
As was mentioned earlier, even the Chinese famines of 1958- 61 reflected the absence of a democratic engagement,
if so, what did the Bangladesh famine reflect?
but more recently the easy abandonment of public health insurance as well as the immunity from criticism that Chinese health services often enjoy could be linked directly to the lack of multi-party politics.
China's success is directly linked to the lack of multi-party politics. It could be a bigger shit-show than India. Indeed, in the Thirties, it was. Thankfully, both Taiwan and China became one-party states and began their rise. At a later point, Taiwan became multi-party. Still, the fact remains, that those 'Tigers' which rose up did so, at least initially, by authoritarian means.
It is the limitation of this role that came most sharply to attention in the context of the SARS epidemic during 2002-3. Although SARS cases first appeared in Southern China in November 2002 and caused many fatalities, information about this new deadly disease was kept under a lid until April 2003. Indeed, it was only when that highly infectious disease started spreading to Hong Kong and Beijing that the news had to be released, and by then the epidemic had already gone beyond the possibility of isolation and local elimination. The lack of open public discussion evidently played a critically important part in the spread of the SARS epidemic.
How has 'open public discussion' helped the US or Europe or India cope with COVID? US deaths are about 0.17 percent. That is ten times higher than India. But China's is 50 times lower than India's! The Economic cost too seems much lower in China. True, Taiwan and Japan have even lower rates without lockdown or much test & trace. It may be that previous exposure to Sars type viruses gives East Asians higher protection. But the fact remains, China's display of State capacity was extraordinary. These guys could build hospitals in a matter of days! The Communist party had its people ready and willing to take charge in every neighborhood.
Covid came out of Sars- perhaps through 'gain of function' research in a Wuhan Lab. But China, with only 3 deaths per million, is miles ahead of the US which has 1,700 deaths.
Fuck 'open public discussion' and the horse it rode in on. Taiwan did even better than China with just technical information being aggregated. Sen-tentious blathershites, howsoever credentialized, was disintermediated.
This is a small example, but the general penalty of the lack of competitive democracy is much more pervasive than that.
What the world has learned is that the penalty of competitive democracy is that you are 500 times more likely to die of a disease which originated in China if you live in the US rather than under the brutal tyranny of Chairman Xi.
India has learned much from China about economic policy and also about health care, especially from China's activist public commitment of the early post-revolutionary period.
No. India has learned by mimicing what is closer to home. There is no point saying 'the Chinese do x' because the Chinese Communist party waded through a sea of blood to gain absolute and complete power. The Indian National Conference came to power not by fighting but by sulking till the Brits decided to go home.
On the other hand, the relevance of public communication and democracy is a general lesson that India can still offer to China.
Because China wants to attain, not an American standard of living but an Indian standard of barely surviving.
The comparison with the state of Kerala is particularly interesting here.
Kerala had a large indigenous Christian community which eagerly embraced Western Education and Medicine. It started to use these high value adding services to pay for manufactured goods. Also, it was a remittance economy. However, whereas South Koreans laboring in the Gulf in the Seventies were investing in their own manufacturing sector, Keralites did not have that option. That is why South Korea overtook Kerala long ago.
Kerala seems to have benefitted from its left-leaning democratic politics,
It benefitted from its powerful Churches being able to ally with muscular Nairs to fuck over the Commies when they tried to take over Christian Colleges and Schools to turn them to shit.
It must be said, that the Kerala Commies- like the Kerala Muslim league- rejected ideology and became meritocratic and cadre based which is why Comrade Shailaja is such a good Health Minister and also why the CM may be re-elected.
having been able to combine (1) the political commitment to social objectives which was typically favored in China and which has helped China to move forward quite early,
Whereas the lack of American political commitment to social objectives led to massive famine in the Sixties and Seventies.
and (2) the benefits of public criticism - in particular more open scrutiny - that a multi-party democratic system provides in India.
Which is why India is now so much richer than China.
The latter, on its own, would seem to have helped India to narrow the gap vis-a-vis China quite sharply.
Cretin! India was level with China in 1990. Twenty years later it had twice the per capita Income. Edward Lim initially thought India could grow faster than China. Then he discovered the power of the 'buddhijivi' and the determination of bien pensant activists and academics to prevent Development so as to get rewarded for being the 'Mother Theresa' of Econ, or Poli Sci, or Jurisprudence, or whatever.
Despite all its inadequacies, the Indian health delivery arrangements have to be open to public criticism which a democratic system standardly fosters, and the fact that much is known about these inadequacies from criticisms in the press is itself a contribution to improving things.
No. If everybody knows a thing is shit but nothing changes no matter which party comes to power, then people just accept that they are shit out of luck.
This opportunity is particularly forcefully seized in a state like Kerala with its high level of basic education and a strong tradition of political appraisal and critique.
But Kerala could only afford education and health care because it was a remittance economy. On the other hand, 'appraisal' and 'critique' did prevent it becoming a manufacturing hub so it was forced to be a remittance economy which in turn meant that education and health could flourish without 'Baumol Cost Disease' because the transfer earnings of employees in those two fields (who couldn't migrate for family reasons) were kept down.
The effectiveness of critical public discussion is also reflected in the lower fertility rate in Kerala (without any regulation or compulsion) than in China,
because of very high population density. Had fertility not declined the whole place would be 'standing room only'.
and the comparative absence of gender bias against women (the female male ratio in Kerala's population is 1.06, as in Europe and North America, not 0.94 as in China and 0.93 as in India as a whole).
Women get good jobs as nurses. This means visas to Canada and a chance for their husband to move too.
If this diagnosis is correct, then we must conclude that in addition to the direct benefits from democratic practice (related to political freedoms and liberties),
which existed just as much in Sen's Bengal as in Kerala but which were associated with Bengal's relative decline
China is losing other benefits from not having a vigorous democracy, which could be particularly effective given what China has already achieved in widespread basic education and general health care.
This is the root of Sen's fallacy. He thinks Democracy is a nice cherry on top of things. But, China's experience is that multi-party Democracy is a shit-show. It had its first provincial elections in 1909 and, as a Republic, its first General Election in 1912. What happened next was war-lordism, anarchy, big famines and then a Japanese invasion. After the War there were elections under a Democratic Constitution but the Commies defeated the KMT and took charge. That's when things started to look up.
Oddly enough, looking back at history, it is the tradition of public criticism and irreverence, and the defiance of authority, which came with Buddhism from India
Nonsense! Confucius, Moh Tzu and countless other savants considered it their pious duty to criticize misconduct even if they paid for this with their lives. Buddhism was only rebellious where the people were rebellious. It is certainly not considered an 'irreverent' or 'defiant' force in 'Greater India' though, no doubt, in the Fifties it did take an anti-Imperialist tinge. But, it soon realized, Communism was the real enemy.
that was singled out for a particularly strong chastisement in early anti-Buddhist criticisms in China. Fu-yi, a powerful Confucian leader, submitted in the seventh century the following complaint about Buddhists to the Tang Emperor (almost paralleling the contemporary ire of the Chinese authorities about the disorder generated by the present-day Falungong): Buddhism infltrated into China from Central Asia, under a strange and barbarous form, and as such, it was then less dangerous. But since the Han period the Indian texts began to be translated into Chinese. Their publicity began to adversely affect the faith of the Princes and filial piety began to degenerate. The people began to shave their heads and refused to bow their heads to the Princes and their ancestors. Fu-yi proposed not only a ban on Buddhist preaching, but also quite a novel way of dealing with the `tens of thousands' of activists, rampaging around in China. `I request you to get them married,' Fu-yi advised the Tang emperor, and `then bring up [their] children to fill the ranks of your army.' The emperor, we learn, refused to undertake this spirited programme of eliminating Buddhist defiance.
However, from time to time, both China and, in the second half of the Nineteenth Century, cracked down on Buddhism. It responded either by serving the national interest or perishing. In India, this religion proved incapable of fighting the Turks. So it vanished.
Sen-tentious shite must vanish from India because it does not serve the national interest. Buddhism, however, is welcome provided it doesn't get too hung up with non-violence and preaching poverty as the best medicine for the soul.
China has embraced the world economy with amazing success, and from this India - like many other countries - has been learning a great deal, particularly in recent years.
Learning? Fuck off! Edward Lim turned up fresh from China and found willing collaborators in people like Montek Singh Ahluwalia. But bienpensant activists and academics found it more profitable to block vital reforms in the name of 'equity'. Buddhijivis and Andalonjivis have buggered Bharat.
But there are lessons that can go in the other direction as well. If India has to carry its reforms further, and do better in basic school education and basic health care than it has done in the past, China too has to address the importance of public debating and discussion with a free media and the relevance of democratic politics.
Fifteen years later, we see that the opposite is the case. Learning shit doesn't help. Doing useful stuff is what matters. Lectures and Critiques are easy to deliver- but they crowd out first-order work of a utile type.
Yi Jing's conclusion that each country has to learn something from the other is as true today as it was in the seventh century when that perceptive Chinese scholar made that remark.
Yi Jing was wrong. Mimicking the successful, not learning shite, is what matters. Yiging himself imitated other Buddhist monks. He didn't just learn the theory of being a monk, he was an actual monk. How did he become so? Sen thinks it was by attending some lectures at some University. The truth is quite different. As a boy of 14, this guy imitated what the monks were doing and thus became one himself. Then, later on, he set off- as others before him had- to advance in the same manner that they had.
There is also a general lesson here about how global contacts can be helpful for different countries.
Only if mimicry is already occurring. Then 'global contacts' can reinforce existing mimetic effects and, if productivity rises, then a tipping point is reached. As happened between China and India, the pupil becomes the master. Indian Buddhists now use many texts which have come down to us only through Chinese sources. China's Nanhai Buddhist University will be a great source of soft power for it in places like Laos while Sen's Nalanda remains a backward and rustic place.
That lesson may have some general relevance, beyond the particular experiences of China and India in particular
Time has shown there was no lesson here at all- just virtue signaling bullshit. Imitating the successful, not paying for more and more lessons, is what makes you successful. Also, if you like Buddhism so much, why don't you marry it? It will soon enough turn into a shrew and make derisive comments about your tiny dick. I'm not saying this happened to me. It is just a general observation on my part. Anyway, the thing could happen to anybody. It's all just a part of Life's rich tapestry. I bear no malice to any creed. Indeed, Socioproctology can be usefully learned by one and all. Online registration is now open. For the low low fee of $9.99, you could qualify in this subject and launch a lucrative career. Mind it kindly. Aiyayo.
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