Development as Freedom
Page 22
It is often pointed out—rightly—that food output per head has been falling in sub-Saharan Africa until recently. This is indeed so and is obviously a matter of concern, and it has implications for many aspects of public policy, varying from agricultural research to population control. But, as was noted earlier, the same fact of falling food output per head applies to many countries in other regions of the world as well.30 These countries did not experience famines both (1) because they achieved relatively high growth rates in other areas of production, and (2) because the dependence on food output as a source of income is much less in these countries than in the typical sub-Saharan African economy.
The tendency to think of growing more food as the only way of solving a food problem is strong and tempting, and often it does have some rationale. But the picture is more complex than that, related to alternative economic opportunities and the possibilities of international trade. As far as lack of growth is concerned, the major feature of sub-Saharan Africa’s problems is not the particular lack of growth in food output as such, but the general lack of economic growth altogether (of which the problem of food output is only one part). The need for a more diversified production structure is very strong in sub-Saharan Africa, given the climatic uncertainties, on the one hand, and the possibility of expanding in other fields of productive activity, on the other. The often-advocated strategy of concentrating exclusively on the expansion of agriculture—and specifically food crops—is like putting all the eggs in the same basket, and the perils of such a policy can be great indeed.
It is, of course, unlikely that the dependence of sub-Saharan Africa on food production as a source of income can be dramatically reduced in the short run. But some diversification can be attempted straightaway, and even the reduction of overdependence on a few crops can enhance security of incomes. In the long run, for sub-Saharan Africa to join in the process of economic expansion that has taken place in much of the rest of the world, sources of income and growth outside food production and even outside agriculture would have to be more vigorosly sought and used.
THE EMPLOYMENT ROUTE AND THE AGENCY ISSUE
Even when the opportunities of international trade are absent, how the total food supply is shared between different groups within the country can be crucially important. Famines can be prevented by re-creating lost incomes of the potential victims (for example, through the temporary creation of wage employment in specially devised public projects), giving them the ability to compete for food in the market, making the available supply more equally shared. In most situations in which famines have occurred, a more equal sharing of food would have prevented starvation (though expanding the food supply would obviously have made things easier). Famine prevention through employment creation, with or without expanding the total food availability, has been well used in many countries, including India, Botswana and Zimbabwe.31
The employment route also happens to encourage the processes of trade and commerce, and does not disrupt economic, social and family lives. The people helped can mostly stay on in their own homes, close to their economic activities (like farming), so that these economic operations are not disrupted. The family life too can continue in a normal way, rather than people being herded into emergency camps. There is also more social continuity, and, furthermore, less danger of the spread of infectious diseases, which tend to break out in the overcrowded camps. In general, the approach of relief through employment also allows the potential famine victims to be treated as active agents, rather than as passive recipients of governmental handouts.32
Another point to note here (in line with the overall approach of this book) is the combined uses of different social institutions in this process of famine prevention. Public policy here takes the form of drawing on very different institutional arrangements:
1) state support in creating income and employment;
2) operation of private markets for food and labor;
3) reliance on normal commerce and business.
The integration of the respective roles of different social institutions—involving the market as well as nonmarket organizations—is very important for an adequately broad approach to the prevention of famines, as it is, in fact, for economic development in general.
DEMOCRACY AND FAMINE PREVENTION
Earlier on in this book I referred to the role of democracy in preventing famines. The argument related particularly to the political incentives generated by elections, multiparty politics and investigative journalism. It is certainly true that there has never been a famine in a functioning multiparty democracy.
Is this observed historical association a causal one, or simply an accidental occurrence? The possibility that the connection between democratic political rights and the absence of famines is a “bogus correlation” may seem plausible enough when one considers the fact that the democratic countries are typically also rather rich and thus, perhaps, immune from famines for other reasons. But the absence of famines holds even for those democratic countries that happen to be very poor, such as India, Botswana or Zimbabwe.
Indeed, the democratic poor countries sometimes have had much larger declines in the production and supply of food, and also sharper collapse of the purchasing power of substantial sections of the population, than some nondemocratic countries. But while the dictatorial countries had major famines, the democratic ones managed to avert famines altogether despite the worse food situation. For example, Botswana had a fall in food production of 17 percent and Zimbabwe one of 38 percent between 1979–1981 and 1983–1984, in the same period in which the food production decline amounted to a relatively modest 11 or 12 percent in Sudan and Ethiopia. But while Sudan and Ethiopia, with comparatively smaller declines in food output, had massive famines, Botswana and Zimbabwe had none, and this was largely due to timely and extensive famine prevention policies by these latter countries.33
Had the governments in Botswana and Zimbabwe failed to undertake timely action, they would have been under severe criticism and pressure from the opposition and would have gotten plenty of flak from newspapers. In contrast, the Ethiopian and Sudanese governments did not have to reckon with those prospects, and the political incentives provided by democratic institutions were thoroughly absent in those countries. Famines in Sudan and Ethiopia—and in many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa—were fed by the political immunity enjoyed by governmental leaders in authoritarian countries. This would seem to apply to the present situation in North Korea as well.
Indeed, famines are very easy to prevent through regenerating the lost purchasing power of hard-hit groups, and this can be done through various programs, including—as was just discussed—the creation of emergency employment in short-term public projects. Postindependence India has had, on different occasions, very large declines in food production and availability, and also quite gigantic destruction of the economic solvency of large groups of people, and still famines have been prevented through giving the potential famine victims “entitlement” to food, through wage income in employment-oriented projects and other means. It is obvious that getting more food into the famine-stricken region helps to alleviate the famine if the potential famine victims have the economic power to buy the food, for which too creating income for those without any (or with very little) is quite crucial. But even in the absence of any food import into the region, the creation of income for the destitute people itself helps to alleviate hunger through a better sharing of the available food.34
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.35 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).
INCENTIVES, INFORMATION AND THE PREVENTION OF FAMINES
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.36
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.37
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:
Without democracy, you have no understanding of what is happening down below; the situation will be unclear; you will be unable to collect sufficient opinions from all sides; there can be no communication between top and bottom; top-level organs of leadership will depend on one-sided and incorrect material to decide issues, thus you will find it difficult to avoid being subjectivist; it will be impossible to achieve unity of understanding and unity of action, and impossible to achieve true centralism.38
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.
PROTECTIVE ROLE OF DEMOCRACY
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.40
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 cre
ation). 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.
TRANSPARENCY, SECURITY AND ASIAN ECONOMIC CRISES
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.