Development as Freedom (31 page)

In the 1973 drought in Maharashtra in India, food production fell so sharply that the per capita food output was half that in sub-Saharan Africa. And yet there was no famine in Maharashtra (where five million people were employed in rapidly organized public projects), while there were very substantial famines in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Aside from these intercountry contrasts of experiences in famine prevention, which bring out forcefully the protective role of democracy, there is also some interesting intertemporal evidence relating to a country’s
transition
to democracy. For example, India continued to have famines right up to the time of independence in 1947. The last famine—one of the largest—was the Bengal famine in the spring and summer of 1943 (which I had the experience of witnessing, in its full rigor, as a nine-year-old boy); it is estimated that between two million and three million people died in that famine. Since independence and the installation of a multiparty democratic system, there has been no substantial famine, even though severe crop failures and massive loss of purchasing power have occurred often enough (for example, in 1968, 1973, 1979 and 1987).

The causal connection between democracy and the nonoccurrence of famines is not hard to seek. Famines kill millions of people in different countries in the world, but they don’t kill the rulers. The kings and the presidents, the bureaucrats and the bosses, the military leaders and the commanders never are famine victims. And if there are no elections, no opposition parties, no scope for uncensored public criticism, then those in authority don’t have to suffer the political consequences of their failure to prevent famines. Democracy, on the other hand, would spread the penalty of famines to the ruling groups and political leaders as well. This gives them the political incentive to
try
to prevent any threatening famine, and since famines are in fact easy to prevent (the economic argument clicks into the political one at this stage), the approaching famines are firmly prevented.

The second issue concerns
information
. A free press and the practice
of democracy contribute greatly to bringing out information that can have an enormous impact on policies for famine prevention (for example, information about the early effects of droughts and floods and about the nature and impact of unemployment). The most elementary source of basic information from distant areas about a threatening famine are enterprising news media, especially when there are incentives—provided by a democratic system—for bringing out facts that may be embarrassing to the government (facts that an authoritarian government would tend to censor out). Indeed, I would argue that a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threatened by famines can have.

The connection between political rights and economic needs can be illustrated in the specific context of famine prevention by considering the massive Chinese famines of 1958–1961. Even before the recent economic reforms, China had been much more successful than India in economic development in many significant respects. For example, the average life expectancy went up in China much more than in India, and well before the reforms of 1979 had already come close to the high figures that are quoted now (nearly seventy years at birth). Nevertheless, there was a major failure in China in its inability to prevent famines. The Chinese famines of 1958–1961 killed, it is now estimated, close to thirty million people—ten times more than even the gigantic 1943 famine in British India.
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The so-called Great Leap Forward initiated in the late 1950s had been a massive failure, but the Chinese government refused to admit that and continued to pursue dogmatically much the same disastrous policies for three more years. It is hard to imagine that anything like this could have happened in a country that goes to the polls regularly and that has an independent press. During that terrible calamity the government faced no pressure from newspapers, which were controlled, and none from opposition parties, which were absent.

The lack of a free system of news distribution also misled the government itself, fed by its own propaganda and by rosy reports of local party officials competing for credit in Beijing. Indeed, there is evidence that just as the famine was moving toward its peak, the Chinese authorities mistakenly believed that they had 100 million more metric tons of grain than they actually did.
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Interestingly enough, even Chairman Mao, whose radical hopes and beliefs had much to do with the initiation of, and official persistence with, the Great Leap Forward, himself identified the
informational
role of democracy, once the failure was belatedly acknowledged. In 1962, just after the famine had killed so many millions, Mao made the following observation, to a gathering of seven thousand cadres:

Mao’s defense of democracy here is quite limited. The focus is exclusively on the informational side—ignoring its incentive role, and also the intrinsic and constitutive importance of democracy.
³⁹
Nevertheless it is extremely interesting that Mao himself acknowledged the extent to which disastrous official policies were caused by the lack of the informational links that a more democratic system can provide in averting disasters of the kind that China experienced.

These issues remain relevant in the contemporary world—even in the economically successful China of today. Since the economic reforms of 1979, official Chinese pronouncements have provided plentiful admission of the importance of
economic
incentives, without making a similar acknowledgment of the role of
political
incentives. When things go reasonably well, this permissive role of democracy might not be greatly missed, but as and when big policy mistakes are made, that lacuna can be quite disastrous. The significance of the democracy movements in contemporary China has to be judged in this light.

Another set of examples comes from sub-Saharan Africa, which has been plagued by persistent famines since the early 1970s. There are many factors underlying the famine-proneness of this region, varying from ecological issues of climatic deterioration—making crops more uncertain—to the firmly negative effects of persistent wars and skirmishes. But the typically authoritarian nature of many of the sub-Saharan Africa polities also has had much to do with causing the frequent famines.
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The nationalist movements were all firmly anticolonial, but not always steadfastly pro-democratic, and it is only recently that asserting the value of democracy has achieved some political respectability in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa. And in this political milieu, the cold war in the world did not help at all. The United States and the West were ready to support undemocratic governments if they were sufficiently anticommunist, and the Soviet Union and China would support governments inclined to be on their respective sides no matter how antiegalitarian they might be in their domestic policies. When opposition parties were banned and newspapers suppressed, there were very few international protests.

One must not deny that there were African governments even in some one-party states that were deeply motivated toward averting disasters and famines. There are examples of this varying from the tiny country of Cape Verde to the politically experimental Tanzania. But quite often the absence of opposition and the suppression of free newspapers gave the respective governments an immunity from criticism and political pressure that translated into thoroughly insensitive and callous policies. Famines were often taken for granted, and it was common to put the blame for the disasters on natural causes and on the perfidy of other countries. In various ways, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, several of the Sahel countries and others provide glaring examples of how badly things can go wrong without the discipline of opposition parties and the news media.

This is not to deny that famines in these countries were often associated with crop failures. When a crop fails, it not only affects the food supply, it also destroys the employment and livelihood of a great many people. But the occurrence of crop failure is not independent of public policy (such as governmental fixing of relative prices, or the policy regarding irrigation and agricultural research). Further,
even with crop failures, a famine can be averted by a careful redistribution policy (including that of employment creation). Indeed, as was discussed earlier, democratic countries like Botswana, or India, or Zimbabwe, have been entirely successful in preventing famines despite sharp declines in food output and entitlements of large sections of the population, whereas nondemocratic countries have frequently experienced unprevented famines despite much more favorable food situations. It would not be unreasonable to conclude that democracy can be a very positive influence in the prevention of famines in the contemporary world.

This preventive role of democracy fits well into the demand for what was called “protective security” in the listing of different types of instrumental freedoms. Democratic governance, including multiparty elections and open media, makes it very likely that some arrangements for basic protective security will be instituted. In fact, the occurrence of famines is only one example of the protective reach of democracy. The positive role of political and civil rights applies to the prevention of economic and social disasters in general.

When things are routinely good and smooth, this instrumental role of democracy may not be particularly missed. But it comes into its own when things get fouled up, for one reason or another. And then the political incentives provided by democratic governance acquire great practical significance. There may be some important economic as well as political lessons here. Many economic technocrats recommend the use of economic incentives (which the market system provides) while ignoring political incentives (which democratic systems could guarantee). But economic incentives, important as they are, are no substitute for political incentives, and the absence of an adequate system of political incentives is a lacuna that cannot be filled by the operation of economic inducement.

This is an important issue because the danger of insecurity, arising from changes in the economic or other circumstances or from uncorrected mistakes of policy, can lurk behind what may look very much like a healthy economy. The recent problems of East Asia and Southeast
Asia bring out, among many other things, the penalty of undemocratic governance. This is so in two striking respects, involving the neglect of two instrumental freedoms that were discussed earlier, viz., “protective security” (presently under scrutiny) and “transparency guarantee” (important for the provision of security and for incentives to economic and political agents).

First, the development of the financial crisis in some of these economies has been closely linked with the lack of transparency in business, in particular the lack of public participation in reviewing financial and business arrangements. The absence of an effective democratic forum has been consequential in this failing. The opportunity that would have been provided by democratic processes to challenge the hold of selected families or groups could have made a big difference.

The discipline of financial reform that the International Monetary Fund tried to impose on the economies in default was, to a considerable extent, linked to the lack of openness and disclosure and the involvement of unscrupulous business linkages that were characteristic in parts of these economies. These characteristics connect strongly with a system of nontransparent commercial arrangements. When a depositor places his or her money in a bank there may be some expectation that it will be used, along with other money, in ways that would not involve undue risk and could be openly disclosed. This trust was often violated, which certainly needed changing. I am not commenting here on whether the IMF’s management of the crises was exactly right, or whether the insistence on immediate reforms could have been sensibly postponed until financial confidence had returned in these economies.
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But no matter how these adjustments would have been best done, the role of transparency freedom—or rather its absence—in the development of the Asian crises cannot be easily doubted.

The pattern of risk and improper investments could have been placed under much greater scrutiny if democratic critics were able to demand that in, say, Indonesia or South Korea. But of course neither of these countries had the democratic system that would have allowed such demands to come from outside the government. The unchallenged power of governance was easily translated into an unquestioned acceptance of nonaccountability and nontransparency,
often reinforced by strong family links between the government and the financial bosses. In the emergence of the economic crises, the undemocratic nature of the governments played an important part.

Second, once the financial crisis led to a general economic recession, the protective power of democracy—not unlike that which prevents famines in democratic countries—was badly missed. The newly dispossessed did not have the hearing they needed.
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A fall of total gross national product of, say, even 10 percent may not look like much, if it follows the experience of past economic growth of 5 or 10 percent every year for some decades. And yet that decline can decimate lives and create misery for millions, if the burden of contraction is not shared together but allowed to be heaped on those—the unemployed or those newly made economically redundant—who can least bear it. The vulnerable in Indonesia may not have missed democracy when things went up and up, but that very lacuna kept their voice muffled and ineffective as the unequally shared crisis developed. The protective role of democracy is strongly missed when it is most needed.