Development as Freedom (18 page)

On the other hand, the double-digit unemployment rates that are currently tolerated in Europe would very likely be (as was argued earlier) political dynamite in America, since unemployment rates of that magnitude would make a mockery of people’s ability to help themselves. I believe no U.S. government could emerge unscathed from the doubling of the present level of unemployment, which incidentally would still keep the U.S. unemployment ratio below what it currently is in Italy or France or Germany. The nature of the respective political commitments—and lack thereof—would seem to differ fundamentally between Europe and America, and the differences relate closely to seeing inequality in terms of particular failures of basic capabilities.

Extreme poverty is now heavily concentrated in two particular regions of the world: South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. They have among the lowest levels of per capita income among all the regions, but that perspective does not give us an adequate idea of the nature and content of their respective deprivations, nor of their comparative poverty. If poverty is seen, instead, as the deprivation of basic capabilities, then a more illuminating picture can be obtained from information on aspects of life in these parts of the world.
²⁶
A brief analysis is attempted below, based on a joint study with Jean Drèze, and on two follow-up works of this author.
²⁷

Around 1991 there were fifty-two countries where the expectation of life at birth was below sixty years, and those countries had a combined population of 1.69 billion.
²⁸
Forty-six of these countries are in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa—only six are outside these two regions (viz. Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Laos, Papua New Guinea and Yemen), and the combined population of these six is only 3.5 percent of the total population (1.69 billion) of the fifty-two low-life-expectancy countries. The
whole
of South Asia except Sri Lanka (i.e., India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan) and the
whole
of sub-Saharan Africa except South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Botswana, and a collection of tiny islands (e.g., Mauritius and the Seychelles) belong to the group of the other forty-six low-life-expectancy countries. Of course, there are variations
within
each country. Well-placed sections of the population of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa enjoy high longevity, and as was discussed earlier, parts of the population of countries even with very high average life expectancy (such as the United States) may have survival problems that compare with conditions in the third world. (For example, American black men in U.S. cities such as New York, San Francisco, St. Louis, or Washington, D.C., have life expectancies well below our cut-off point of sixty years.
²⁹
) But in terms of country averages, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa do indeed stand out as the regions where short and precarious lives are concentrated in the contemporary world.

TABLE
4.1:
India and Sub-Saharan Africa: Selected Comparisons (1991)

Note:
The age cutoff is 15 years for African figures, and 7 years for Indian figures. Note that in India, the 7+ literacy rate is usually higher than the 15+ literacy rate (e.g., the all-India 7+ literacy rate in 1981 was 43.6%, compared with 40.8% for the 15+ literacy rate).

Indeed, India alone accounts for more than half of the combined population of these fifty-two deprived countries. It is not by any means the worst performer on average (in fact, average life expectancy in India is very close to sixty years and according to latest statistics has just risen above it), but there are large regional variations in living conditions
within
India. Some regions of India (with populations as large as—or larger than—most countries in the world) do as badly as any country in the world. India may do significantly better on average than, say, the worst performers (such as Ethiopia or Zaire, now renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo) in terms of life expectancy and other indicators, but there are large areas within India where life expectancy and other basic living conditions are not very different from those prevailing in these most-deprived countries.
³⁰

Source:
J. Drèze and A. Sen,
India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), table 3.1.

Table 4.1 compares the levels of
infant mortality
and
adult literacy
in the least-developed regions of sub-Saharan Africa and India.
³¹
The table presents the 1991 estimates of these two variables not only for India and sub-Saharan Africa as a whole (first and last rows), but also for the three worst-performing countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the three worst-performing Indian states, and the worst-performing districts of each of these three states. It is remarkable that there is no country in sub-Saharan Africa—or indeed in the world—where estimated infant mortality rates are as high as in the district of Ganjam in Orissa, or where the adult female literacy rate is as low as in the district of Barmer in Rajasthan. Each of these two districts, incidentally, has a larger population than Botswana or Namibia, and the combined population of the two is larger than that of Sierra Leone, Nicaragua or Ireland. Indeed, even entire states such as Uttar Pradesh
(which has a population as large as that of Brazil or Russia) do not do much better than the worst-off among the sub-Saharan countries in terms of these basic indicators of living quality.
³²

It is interesting that if we take India and sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, we find that the two regions are not very different in terms of either adult literacy or infant mortality. They do differ in terms of life expectancy, though. The expectation of life in India around 1991 was about sixty years, while it was much below that figure in sub-Saharan Africa (averaging about fifty-two years).
³³
On the other hand, there is considerable evidence that the extent of undernourishment is much greater in India than in sub-Saharan Africa.
³⁴

There is thus an interesting pattern of contrast between India and sub-Saharan Africa in terms of the different criteria of (1) mortality and (2) nutrition. The survival advantage in favor of India can be brought out not only by comparisons of life expectancy, but also by contrasts of other mortality statistics. For example, the median age at death in India was about thirty-seven years around 1991; this compares with a weighted average (of median age at death) for sub-Saharan Africa of a mere five years.
³⁵
Indeed, in as many as five African countries, the median age at death was observed to be three years or below. Seen in this perspective, the problem of premature mortality is enormously sharper in Africa than in India.

But we get a very different balance of disadvantages if we look at the prevalence of
undernourishment
in India via-à-vis Africa. Calculations of general undernourishment are much higher in India than in sub-Saharan Africa on the average.
³⁶
This is so despite the fact that it is India, rather than sub-Saharan Africa, that is self-sufficient in food. Indian “self-sufficiency” is based on the fulfillment of market demand, which can be, in normal years, easily met by domestically produced supply. But the market demand (based on purchasing power) understates the food needs. Actual undernourishment seems to be much higher in India than in sub-Saharan Africa. Judged in terms of the usual standards of retardation in weight for age, the proportion of undernourished children in Africa is 20 to 40 percent, whereas the proportion of undernourished children in India is a gigantic 40 to 60 percent.
³⁷
About half of all Indian children are, it appears, chronically undernourished. While Indians live longer than sub-Saharan Africans, and have a median age at death much higher than Africans have, nevertheless there are many more undernourished children in
India than sub-Saharan Africa—not just in absolute terms but also as a proportion of all children.
³⁸
If we add to it the fact that gender bias at death is a substantial problem in India, but not so in sub-Saharan Africa, we see a picture that is much less favorable to India than to Africa.
³⁹

There are important policy issues related to the nature and complexity of the respective patterns of deprivation in the two most acute regions of poverty in the world. India’s advantage over sub-Saharan Africa in survival relates to a variety of factors that have made Africans especially prone to premature mortality. Since independence, India has been relatively free of the problems of famine and also of large-scale and persistent warfare, which has periodically ravaged a large number of African countries. India’s health services—inadequate as they are—have been less overwhelmed by political and military turmoil. Furthermore, many countries of sub-Saharan Africa have had specific experiences of economic
decline
—partly related to wars, unrest and political disorder—which make it particularly hard to improve living standards. A comparative assessment of the achievements and failures of the two regions would have to take note of these and other aspects of their respective development experiences.
⁴⁰

One should also note that one problem that India and sub-Saharan Africa have in common is the persistence of endemic illiteracy—a feature that, like low life expectancy, sets South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa apart from most of the rest of the world. As table 4.1 indicates, literacy rates are very similar in the two regions. Both in India and in sub-Saharan Africa, every other adult is illiterate.

The three focal features of deprivation of basic capabilities on which I have concentrated in comparing and contrasting the nature of deprivation in India and in sub-Saharan Africa (viz.,
premature mortality, undernourishment
and
illiteracy)
do not, of course, provide a comprehensive picture of capability-poverty in these regions. However, they bring out some striking failures and some crucial policy issues that demand immediate attention. I have also not attempted to produce an “aggregate” measure of deprivation, based on “weighting” the different aspects of capability deprivation.
⁴¹
A constructed aggregate may often be far less interesting for policy analysis than the substantive pattern of diverse performances.

FIGURE
4.2:
Female-Male Ratios in Total Population in Selected Communities

Source:
Calculated from UN Population Statistics.

I turn now to a specific aspect of a general inequality that has drawn much attention lately; this section draws on my article “Missing Women” published in the
British Medical Journal
in 1992.
⁴²
I refer to the terrible phenomenon of excess mortality and artificially lower survival rates of women in many parts of the world. This is a crude and sharply visible aspect of gender inequality, which often manifests itself in more subtle and less gruesome forms. But despite its crudeness, the artificially higher female mortality rates reflect a very important capability deprivation of women.