by Sen, Amartya
And yet there is plenty of evidence that whenever social arrangements depart from the standard practice of male ownership, women can seize business and economic initiative with much success. It is also clear that the result of women’s participation is not merely to generate income for women, but also to provide the social benefits that come from women’s enhanced status and independence (including the reduction of mortality and fertility rates, just discussed). The economic participation of women is, thus, both a reward on its own (with associated reduction of gender bias in the treatment of women in family decisions), and a major influence for social change in general.
The remarkable success of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is a good example of this. That visionary microcredit movement, led by Muhammad Yunus, has consistently aimed at removing the disadvantage from which women suffer, because of discriminatory treatment in the rural credit market, by making a special effort to provide credit to women borrowers. The result has been a very high proportion of women among the customers of the Grameen Bank. The remarkable record of that bank in having a very high rate of repayment (reported to be close to 98 percent) is not unrelated to the way women have responded to the opportunities offered to them and to the prospects of ensuring the continuation of such arrangements.27 Also in Bangladesh, similar emphasis has been placed on women’s participation by BRAC, led by another visionary leader, Fazle Hasan Abed.28 These and other economic and social movements in Bangladesh have done a lot not merely to raise the “deal” that women get, but also—through the greater agency of women—to bring about other major changes in the society. For example, the sharp decline in fertility rate that has occurred in Bangladesh in recent years seems to have clear connections with the increasingly higher involvement of women in social and economic affairs, in addition to much greater availability of family planning facilities, even in rural Bangladesh.29
Another area in which women’s involvement in economic affairs varies is that of agricultural activities related to land ownership. There too the economic opportunities that women get can have a decisive influence on the working of the economy and the related social arrangements. Indeed, “a field of one’s own” (as Bina Agarwal calls it) can be a major influence on women’s initiative and involvement, with far-reaching effects on the balance of economic and social power between women and men.30 Similar issues arise in understanding women’s role in environmental developments, particularly in conserving natural resources (such as trees), with a particular linkage to women’s life and work.31
Indeed, the empowerment of women is one of the central issues in the process of development for many countries in the world today. The factors involved include women’s education, their ownership pattern, their employment opportunities and the workings of the labor market.32 But going beyond these rather “classic” variables, they include also the nature of the employment arrangements, attitudes of the family and of the society at large toward women’s economic activities, and the economic and social circumstances that encourage or resist change in these attitudes.33 As Naila Kabeer’s illuminating study of the work and economic involvement of Bangladeshi women in Dhaka and London brings out, the continuation of, or break from, past arrangements is strongly influenced by the exact economic and social relations that operate in the local environments.34 The changing agency of women is one of the major mediators of economic and social change, and its determination as well as consequences closely relate to many of the central features of the development process.35
A CONCLUDING REMARK
The focus on the agency role of women has a direct bearing on women’s well-being, but its reach goes well beyond that. In this chapter, I have tried to explore the distinction between—and interrelations of—agency and well-being, and then have gone on to illustrate the reach and power of women’s agency, particularly in two specific fields: (1) in promoting child survival and (2) in helping to reduce fertility rates. Both these matters have general developmental interest that goes well beyond the pursuit specifically of female well-being, though—as we have seen—female well-being is also directly involved and has a crucial intermediating role in enhancing these general achievements.
The same applies to many other areas of economic, political and social action, varying from rural credit and economic activities, on the one hand, to political agitation and social debates, on the other.36 The extensive reach of women’s agency is one of the more neglected areas of development studies, and most urgently in need of correction. Nothing, arguably, is as important today in the political economy of development as an adequate recognition of political, economic and social participation and leadership of women. This is indeed a crucial aspect of “development as freedom.”
CHAPTER 9
POPULATION, FOOD AND FREEDOM
The contemporary age is not short of terrible and nasty happenings, but the persistence of extensive hunger in a world of unprecedented prosperity is surely one of the worst. Famines visit many countries with astonishing severity—“fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell” (to borrow John Milton’s words). In addition, massive endemic hunger causes great misery in many parts of the world—debilitating hundreds of millions and killing a sizable proportion of them with statistical regularity. What makes this widespread hunger even more of a tragedy is the way we have come to accept and tolerate it as an integral part of the modern world, as if it is a tragedy that is essentially unpreventable (in the way ancient Greek tragedies were).
I have already argued against judging the nature and severity of the problems of hunger, undernourishment, and famine by concentrating on food output only. However, food output must be one of the variables that can, inter alia, influence the prevalence of hunger. Even the price at which food can be bought by the consumers will be affected by the size of the food output. Furthermore, when we consider food problems at the global level (rather than at the national or local level), there is obviously no opportunity of getting food from “outside” the economy. For these reasons, the often aired fear that food production per head is falling in the world cannot be dismissed out of hand.
IS THERE A WORLD FOOD CRISIS?
But is the fear justified? Is the world food output falling behind world population in what is seen as a “race” between the two? The fear that this is precisely what is happening, or that it will soon happen, has had remarkable staying power despite relatively little evidence in its favor. Malthus, for example, anticipated two centuries ago that food production was losing the race and that terrible disasters would result from the consequent imbalance in “the proportion between the natural increase of population and food.” He was quite convinced, in his late-eighteenth-century world, that “the period when the number of men surpass their means of subsistence has long since arrived.”1 However, since the time when Malthus first published his famous Essay on Population in 1798, the world population has grown nearly six times, and yet food output and consumption per head are very considerably higher now than in Malthus’s time, and this has occurred along with an unprecedented increase in general living standards.
However, the fact that Malthus was badly mistaken in his diagnosis of overpopulation at his time (with less than a billion people around) and in his prognosis about the terrible consequences of population growth does not establish that all fears about population growth at all times must be similarly erroneous. But what about the present? Is food production really losing the race with population growth? Table 9.1 presents the indices of food production per head (based on statistics from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations) for the world as a whole as well as for some of the major regions in terms of three-year averages (to avoid being misled by year-to-year fluctuations), with the average for 1979–1981 serving as the base of the index (100); index values are given up to 1996–1997. (Adding the 1998 figures does not alter the basic picture.) Not only is there no real decline in world food production per head (quite the contrary), but also the largest per capita inc
reases have come in the more densely populated areas of the third world (in particular, China, India and the rest of Asia).
The African food output has, however, declined (on which I have already commented), and the prevalence of poverty in Africa puts it in a very vulnerable situation. However, as was argued earlier (in chapter 7) the problems of sub-Saharan Africa are mainly a reflection of a general economic crisis (indeed a crisis with strong social and political as well as economic components)—not specifically of a “food production crisis.” The food production story fits into a larger predicament that has to be addressed in broader terms.
TABLE 9.1: Indices of Food Production per Head by Regions
Note: With the three-year average of 1979–1981 as the base, the three-year averages for the years 1984–1986, 1994–1996 and 1996–1997 are obtained from the United Nations (1995, 1998), table 4. The three-year averages for the earlier years (1974–1976) are based on the United Nations (1984), table 1. There may be slight differences in the relative weights between the two sets of comparisons, so that the series should not be taken to be fully comparable between the two sides of 1979–1981, but the quantitative difference made by this, if any, is likely to be quite small. Sources: United Nations, FAO Quarterly Bulletin of Statistics, 1995 and 1998, and FAO Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, August 1984.
There is, in fact, no significant crisis in world food production at this time. The rate of expansion of food production does, of course, vary over time (and in some years of climatic adversity there is even a decline, giving the alarmists a field day for a year or two), but the trend is quite clearly upward.
ECONOMIC INCENTIVES AND FOOD PRODUCTION
It is also important to note that this rise in world food production has taken place despite a sharply declining trend in world food prices in real terms, as table 9.2 indicates. The period covered—more than forty-five years—is from 1950–1952 to 1995–1997. This entails a decline of economic incentives to produce more food in many areas of commercial food production in the world, including North America.
TABLE 9.2: Food Prices in Constant 1990 U.S. Dollars: 1950–1952 to 1995–1997
Note: The units are constant (1990) U.S. dollars per metric ton, adjusted by the G-5 Manufacturing Unit Value (MUV) index.
Sources: World Bank, Commodity Markets and the Developing Countries, November 1998, table A1 (Washington, D.C.); World Bank, Price Prospects for Major Primary Commodities, vol. 2, tables A5, A10, A15 (Washington, D.C., 1993).
Food prices do, of course, fluctuate in the short run, and panicky statements were often made in response to an increase in the mid-1990s. But this was a small rise compared with the big fall since 1970 (see figure 9.1). Indeed, there is a strongly declining long-term trend, and there is nothing yet to indicate that the long-run downward trend of the relative price of food has been reversed. Last year, during 1998, the world prices for wheat and coarse grain declined again by 20 percent and 14 percent respectively.2
In the context of an economic analysis of the present situation, we cannot ignore the disincentive effect that the lowering of world food prices has already had on food production. It is, thus, particularly impressive that the world food output has nevertheless continued to grow, well ahead of population growth. In fact, had more food been produced (without curing the income shortage from which most of the hungry people in the world suffer), the selling of food would have been even more of a problem than is reflected in the declining food prices. Not surprisingly, the biggest increases have come from regions (such as China and India) where the domestic food markets are relatively insulated from world markets and the declining trend of world food prices.
FIGURE 9.1: Food Prices in Constant 1990 U.S. Dollars
Note: The units are constant (1990) U. S. dollars deflated by the G-5 Manufacturing Unit Value (MUV) index.
Source: World Bank, Commodity Markets and Developing Countries (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1998), table A1.
It is important to see the production of food as a result of human agency, and to understand the incentives that operate on people’s decisions and actions. Like other economic activities, commercial production of food is influenced by markets and prices. At this time, the world food production is being kept in check by the lack of demand and falling food prices; this in turn reflects the poverty of some of the neediest people. Technical studies on the opportunity to produce more food (if and when the demand increases) outline very substantial opportunities of making the food production per head grow much faster in per capita terms. Indeed, yield per hectare has continued to rise in every region of the world, and for the world as a whole, it went up on average by about 42.6 kilograms per hectare per year during 1981–1993.3 In terms of world food production, 94 percent of the rise in cereal production between 1970 and 1990 reflected an increase in yield per unit of land, and only 6 percent was due to area increase.4 With greater demand for food, the intensification of cultivation can be expected to continue, especially since the differences in yield per hectare are still enormously large between the different regions in the world.
BEYOND THE TREND OF FOOD OUTPUT PER HEAD
All this does not, however, wipe out the need for slowing down the population growth. Indeed, the environmental challenge is not just that of food production—there are many other issues related to population growth and overcrowding. But it does indicate that there is little reason for any great pessimism that food output will soon start falling behind population growth. In fact, a tendency to concentrate on food production only, neglecting food entitlement, can be deeply counterproductive. Policy makers may be misled if insulated from the real situation of hunger—and even threats of famines—by favorable food output situations.
For example, in the Bengal famine of 1943, the administrators were so impressed by the fact that there was no significant food output decline (on which they were right) that they failed to anticipate—and for some months even refused to recognize—the famine as it hit Bengal with stormy severity.5 Just as “Malthusian pessimism” may be misleading as a predictor of the food situation in the world, what may be called “Malthusian optimism” can kill millions when the administrators get entrapped by the wrong perspective of food-output-per-head and ignore early signs of disaster and famine. A misconceived theory can kill, and the Malthusian perspective of food-to-population ratio has much blood on its hands.
POPULATION GROWTH AND THE ADVOCACY OF COERCION
While the Malthusian long-run fears about food output are baseless, or at least premature, there are good reasons to worry about the rate of growth of world population in general. There is little doubt that the growth rate of world population has speeded up over the last century at a remarkable rate. It took the world population millions of years to reach the first billion, then 123 years to get to the second, followed by 33 years to the third, 14 years to the fourth, and 13 years to the fifth billion, with the promise of a sixth billion to come in another 11 years (according to the projections of the United Nations).6 The number of people on earth grew by about 923 million (1980–1990 alone), and that increase is close enough to the size of the total population of the entire world in Malthus’s time. The 1990s, when they are done, will not have been significantly less expansionary.
If this were to continue the world certainly would be tremendously overcrowded before the end of the twenty-first century. There are, however, many clear signs that the rate of growth of world population is beginning to slow down, and the question that has to be asked is whether the reasons behind that slowdown are likely to become stronger, and if so, at what rate. No less importantly, it has to be asked whether something should be done through public policy to help the process of slowdown.
This is a highly divisive subject, but there is a strong school of thought that favors, if only implicitly, a coercive solution to this problem. There have also been several practical moves in that direction recently—most famously in China, in a set of policies introduced in 1979. The issue o
f coercion raises three different questions:
1) Is coercion at all acceptable in this field?
2) In the absence of coercion will population growth be unacceptably fast?
3) Is coercion likely to be effective and work without harmful side effects?
COERCION AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
The acceptability of coercion in matters of family decisions raises very deep questions. Opposition to it can come both from those who would give priority to the family to decide how many children to have (it is, in this view, a quintessentially family decision), and from those who argue that this is a matter in which the potential mother in particular must have the deciding voice (especially when it comes to abortion and other matters that directly involve the woman’s body). To be sure, the latter position is usually articulated in the context of asserting the right to have an abortion (and to practice birth control in general), but there is clearly a corresponding claim that would leave the woman to decide not to abort if that is what she wants (no matter what the state wants). So something substantial does turn on the status and significance of reproductive rights.7
The rhetoric of rights is omnipresent in contemporary political debates. There is, however, often an ambiguity in these debates about the sense in which “rights” are invoked, in particular whether the reference is to institutionally sanctioned rights that have juridical force, or whether the appeal is to the prescriptive force of normative rights that can precede legal empowerment. The distinction between the two senses is not entirely clear-cut, but there is a reasonably clear issue as to whether rights can have intrinsic normative importance and not just instrumental relevance in a legal context.