Development as Freedom (16 page)

Different ways of using this freedom-based perspective were also discussed, resisting in particular the idea that the use must take an all-or-none form. In many practical problems, the possibility of using an explicitly freedom-based approach may be relatively limited. Yet even there it is possible to make use of the insights and informational interests involved in a freedom-based approach—without insisting on ignoring other procedures when they can be, within particular contexts, sensibly utilized. The analysis that follows builds on these understandings, in an attempt to throw light on underdevelopment (seen broadly in the form of unfreedom) and development (seen as a process of removing unfreedoms and of extending the substantive freedoms of different types that people have reason to value). A general approach can be used in many different ways, depending on the context and on the information that is available. It is this combination of foundational analysis and pragmatic use that gives the capability approach its extensive reach.

It was argued in the last chapter that, in analyzing social justice, there is a strong case for judging individual advantage in terms of the capabilities that a person has, that is, the substantive freedoms he or she enjoys to lead the kind of life he or she has reason to value. In this perspective, poverty must be seen as the deprivation of basic capabilities rather than merely as lowness of incomes, which is the standard criterion of identification of poverty.
¹
The perspective of capability-poverty does not involve any denial of the sensible view that low income is clearly one of the major causes of poverty, since lack of income can be a principal reason for a person’s capability deprivation.

Indeed, inadequate income is a strong predisposing condition for an impoverished life. If this is accepted, what then is all this fuss about, in seeing poverty in the capability perspective (as opposed to seeing it in terms of the standard income-based poverty assessment)? The claims in favor of the capability approach to poverty are, I believe, the following.

The third issue is particularly important in considering and evaluating public action aimed at reducing inequality or poverty. Various reasons for conditional variations have been discussed in the literature (and in
chapter 3
, earlier), and it is useful to emphasize some of them specifically in the context of practical policy making.

First, the relationship between income and capability would be strongly affected by the age of the person (e.g., by the specific needs of the old and the very young), by gender and social roles (e.g., through special responsibilities of maternity and also custom-determined family obligations), by location (e.g., by proneness to flooding or drought, or by insecurity and violence in some inner-city living), by epidemiological atmosphere (e.g., through diseases endemic in a region) and by other variations over which a person may have no—or only limited—control.
³
In making contrasts of population groups classified according to age, gender, location and so on, these parametric variations are particularly important.

Second, there can be some “coupling” of disadvantages between (1) income deprivation and (2) adversity in converting income into functionings.
⁴
Handicaps, such as age or disability or illness, reduce one’s ability to earn an income.
⁵
But they also make it harder to convert income into capability, since an older, or more disabled, or more seriously ill person may need more income (for assistance, for prosthesis, for treatment) to achieve the same functionings (even when that achievement is at all possible).
⁶
This entails that “real poverty” (in terms of capability deprivation) may be, in a significant sense, more intense than what appears in the income space. This can be a crucial concern in assessing public action to assist the elderly and other groups with “conversion” difficulties in addition to lowness of income.

Third, distribution within the family raises further complications with the income approach to poverty. If the family income is used disproportionately in the interest of some family members and not others (for example, if there is a systematic “boy preference” in the family allocation of resources), then the extent of the deprivation of
the neglected members (girls in the example considered) may not be adequately reflected in terms of family income. This is a substantial issue in many contexts; sex bias does appear to be a major factor in the family allocation in many countries in Asia and North Africa. The deprivation of girls is more readily checked by looking at capability deprivation (in terms of greater mortality, morbidity, undernourishment, medical neglect, and so on) than can be found on the basis of income analysis.
⁷

This issue is clearly not as central in the context of inequality and poverty in Europe or North America, but the presumption—often implicitly made—that the issue of gender inequality does not apply at the basic level to the “Western” countries can be, to some extent, misleading. For example, Italy has one of the highest ratios of “unrecognized” labor by women vis-à-vis recognized labor included in the standard national accounts.
⁸
The accounting of effort and time expended, and the related reduction of freedom, has some bearing in the analysis of poverty even in Europe and North America. There are also other ways in which intrafamily divisions are important to include among the considerations relevant for public policy in most parts of the world.

Fourth,
relative
deprivation in terms of
incomes
can yield
absolute
deprivation in terms of
capabilities
. Being relatively poor in a rich country can be a great capability handicap, even when one’s absolute income is high in terms of world standards. In a generally opulent country, more income is needed to buy enough commodities to achieve the
same social functioning
. This consideration—pioneeringly outlined by Adam Smith in
The Wealth of Nations (1776)
—is quite central to sociological understandings of poverty, and it has been analyzed by W. G. Runciman, Peter Townsend and others.
⁹

For example, the difficulties that some groups of people experience in “taking part in the life of the community” can be crucial for any study of “social exclusion.” The need to take part in the life of a community may induce demands for modern equipment (televisions, videocassette recorders, automobiles and so on) in a country where such facilities are more or less universal (unlike what would be needed in less affluent countries), and this imposes a strain on a relatively poor person in a rich country even when that person is at a much higher level of income compared with people in less opulent
countries.
¹⁰
Indeed, the paradoxical phenomenon of hunger in rich countries—even in the United States—has something to do with the competing demands of these expenses.
¹¹

What the capability perspective does in poverty analysis is to enhance the understanding of the nature and causes of poverty and deprivation by shifting primary attention away from
means
(and one particular means that is usually given exclusive attention, viz., income) to
ends
that people have reason to pursue, and, correspondingly, to the
freedoms
to be able to satisfy these ends. The examples briefly considered here illustrate the additional discernment that results from this basic extension. The deprivations are seen at a more fundamental level—one closer to the informational demands of social justice. Hence the relevance of the perspective of capability-poverty.

While it is important to distinguish conceptually the notion of poverty as capability inadequacy from that of poverty as lowness of income, the two perspectives cannot but be related, since income is such an important means to capabilities. And since enhanced capabilities in leading a life would tend, typically, to expand a person’s ability to be more productive and earn a higher income, we would also expect a connection going from capability improvement to greater earning power and not only the other way around.

The latter connection can be particularly important for the removal of income poverty. It is not only the case that, say, better basic education and health care improve the quality of life directly; they also increase a person’s ability to earn an income and be free of income-poverty as well. The more inclusive the reach of basic education and health care, the more likely it is that even the potentially poor would have a better chance of overcoming penury.

The importance of this connection was a crucial point of focus of my recent work on India, done jointly with Jean Drèze, dealing with economic reforms.
¹²
In many ways, the economic reforms have opened up for the Indian people economic opportunities that were suppressed by overuse of control and by the limitations of what had been called the “license Raj.”
¹³
And yet the opportunity to make use
of the new possibilities is not independent of the social preparation that different sections of the Indian community have. While the reforms were overdue, they could be much more productive if the social facilities were there to support the economic opportunities for all sections of the community. Indeed, many Asian economies—first Japan, and then South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and later post-reform China and Thailand and other countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia—have done remarkably well in spreading the economic opportunities through an adequately supportive social background, including high levels of literacy, numeracy, and basic education; good general health care; completed land reforms; and so on. The lesson of opening of the economy and the importance of trade has been more easily learned in India than the rest of the message from the same direction of the rising sun.
¹⁴

India is, of course, highly diverse in terms of human development, with some regions (most notably, Kerala) having much higher levels of education, health care and land reform than others (most notably, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh). The limitations have taken different forms in the different states. It can be argued that Kerala has suffered from what were until recently fairly anti-market policies, with deep suspicion of market-based economic expansion without control. So its human resources have not been as well used in spreading economic growth as they could have been with a more complementary economic strategy, which is now being attempted. On the other hand, some of the northern states have suffered from low levels of social development, with varying degrees of control and market-based opportunities. The need for seizing the relevance of complementarity is very strong in remedying the diverse drawbacks.

It is, however, interesting that despite the rather moderate record in economic growth, Kerala seems to have had a faster rate of reduction in income poverty than any other state in India.
¹⁵
While some states have reduced income poverty through high economic growth (Punjab is the most notable example of that), Kerala has relied a great deal on expansion of basic education, health care and equitable land distribution for its success in reducing penury.

While these connections between income poverty and capability poverty are worth emphasizing, it is also important not to lose sight
of the basic fact that the reduction of income poverty alone cannot possibly be the ultimate motivation of antipoverty policy. There is a danger in seeing poverty in the narrow terms of income deprivation, and then justifying investment in education, health care and so forth on the ground that they are good means to the end of reducing income poverty. That would be a confounding of ends and means. The basic foundational issues force us, for reasons already discussed, toward understanding poverty and deprivation in terms of lives people can actually lead and the freedoms they do actually have. The expansion of human capabilities fits directly into these basic considerations. It so happens that the enhancement of human capabilities also tends to go with an expansion of productivities and earning power. That connection establishes an important indirect linkage through which capability improvement helps both directly and indirectly in enriching human lives and in making human deprivations more rare and less acute. The instrumental connections, important as they are, cannot replace the need for a basic understanding of the nature and characteristics of poverty.