Themes > Current Issues
20.01.2012
Capitalism and Hunger
C.P. Chandrasekhar
A
study recently conducted by the Naandi Foundation in India has found
that 42 per cent of children under five years of age were severely
or moderately underweight because of inadequate access to nutrition.
The study was based on a survey of the height and weight of more than
one lakh children across six states of the country. To restate its
central result: more than two in every five children below five years
of age in this country do not get even the basic minimum nutrition
to survive or develop normally.
Releasing the report, the Prime Minister declared this this was a ''national shame''. Nobody can disagree. Child undernutrition of this magnitude after close to 65 years of independent national development is indeed a shame. And what is even more shameful is that in the period over the last twenty years, when India was reportedly ''shining'' because GDP growth had risen significantly, this failure could not be adequately addressed. Income growth accelerated, but the decline in the level of malnutrition was unsatisfyingly slow. That evidence has also forced the PM to recognise that despite impressive growth in national product in recent years, the level of malnutrition in the country had remained unacceptably high.
Given the obsession with GDP growth of the UPA government, this recognition that growth does not deliver even basic nutrition is indeed positive. But for those who have been observing the path of development India has pursued, especially since the 1990s, such evidence is by no means surprising. The evidence is common knowledge, as are the policies that can help address the problem.
There are many tendencies involved here that need to be separated to correctly understand the predicament the country faces. The first is of course the fundamental problem that capitalist accumulation driven by the search for profit never distributes justly the fruits of whatever growth it delivers. The rich grow richer but the poor tend to either lose out or gain only marginally from the additions to national income. Widespread malnutrition despite growth is one of the consequences. That tendency is exaggerated when the capitalism that we speak of emerges and develops in an environment where social and structural backwardness persists. Hence, rapid advances in human development, be it in terms of reduction in poverty, elimination of hunger and malnutrition or lessening of social deprivation, are never seen.
Thus, it is not surprising to see that improvements in social indicators and reduction in malnutrition are not directly associated with GDP growth or the level of GDP. Within India, for example, Sikkim reported the lowest rates of child malnutrition, while richer Madhya Pradesh had the highest. And, according to one source, the percentage of under weight children in Gujarat, one of India's richest and fast growing state, marginally increased between 2001 and 2006 to touch as much as 47 per cent.
Similarly, for a range of reasons, there are substantial differences in the improvement in social indicators across countries. 28 out of 37 countries in poor Sub-Saharan Africa have lower levels of per capita income than India. Yet they are characterised by lower levels of child malnutrition than India. The failure in India to implement land reform and reduce asset concentration, combined with the pernicious effects of caste-based exclusion, has resulted in forms of extreme inequality that ensure that large numbers remain nutritionally deprived even as India's income grows.
The problem is not confined to children. As economist A.K. Shiv Kumar notes: ''Birth weights of less than 2,500 grams are very closely associated with poor growth not just in infancy but throughout childhood. Estimates for India reveal that 20-30 per cent of all babies are born with low birth weight, suggesting that children begin to get malnourished in the womb.'' Malnutrition is being transferred from mother to child as well.
Given such tendencies under capitalism, it has been long accepted that governments in capitalist societies must intervene to directly address malnutrition for the social good. Well-fed and healthy children grow over time into a healthy and productive workforce, which contributes to national prosperity if they can find jobs. Evidence shows that government action aimed at reaching food to the poor, can substantially affect the level of malnutrition, resulting in the observed lack of correspondence between income levels and the level of malnutrition across states and countries. Such action would ensure access to food at affordable prices as well as put purchasing power in the hands those who are currently deprived of the ability to buy food. What is best is a combination of: (i) a universally accessible public distribution system providing essential items at subsidised prices; and (ii) a public works programme that ensures adequate employment at a reasonable minimum wage for those not absorbed by the capitalist growth trajectory.
On the surface, the UPA government appears on track to meet these, having enacted the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and poised to enact the Food Security Bill. But in practice, both in terms of the content of the bills and in terms of implementation on the ground, there is much to be desired. The NREGA is handicapped by a poor wage structure that falls short of even the minimum wage mandated in most states, as well as by inadequate allocations and spending. And the yet to be enacted Food Security Bill has been so diluted that it is likely to exclude a substantial section of the needy whose failure to access adequate food is responsible for the 42 per cent malnutrition among children.
The reason for this inadequacy in government action is of course liberalisation and ''economic reform''. Having provided huge direct and indirect tax concessions to the rich as part of an effort to encourage and promote private savings and investments, governments at both the centre and in the states are strapped for funds. In addition, all of them have been tied down by the philosophy of liberalisation which opposes deficit spending financed by borrowing. So either deficits are consciously sought to be reduced (as in the centre) or are kept down by law as in the states. If tax revenues are not growing adequately and governments cannot borrow, spending must be curbed. Experience shows that when expenditures have to be trimmed, it is capital expenditures and expenditures on social security that are axed. One obvious casualty is spending on schemes aimed at ensuring food security and rural employment. In sum, by engineering a fiscal crunch liberalisation militates against government policies aimed at countering the adverse effects of capitalist growth on hunger and nutrition. Growth benefits the richest few per cent at the top, while leaving untouched or even marginalising the majority.
But that is not all. The other casualty has been a scheme specifically designed, among other things, to reduce malnutrition among children. This is the Integrated Child Development Scheme, or ICDS, which was initiated in October 1975 in response to the evident problems of persistent hunger and malnutrition especially among children. Among the objectives of the scheme is that of improving the nutritional and health status of children in the age group 0-6 years. Since its inception, the ICDS has grown to become the world's largest early child development programme. The coverage of the Scheme has expanded rapidly, especially in recent years. Nevertheless, as is clear from the child malnutrition figures quoted earlier, for a scheme that has been in operation for three and a half decades, the benefits are still far too limited.
The basic reason is that not enough resources have been devoted to this scheme, to meet the huge requirement. Quite simply, there are not enough anganwadis or anganwadi workers to manage the scheme, and they do not have adequate resources to meet all the nutritional requirements of those pregnant and lactating mothers, infants and small children who need them. The ICDS has been operating on the underpaid labour of women in an undesirable and unsustainable fashion. While small increases in wages have been made, it still leaves them receiving less than minimum wages! Further, the Supreme Court has repeatedly instructed the government to make the scheme universal to all habitations, but the small or negligible increase in budgetary allocations to the ICDS ensures that this will not happen in the near future.
Put simply capitalist growth of the worst variety fostered by neoliberalism and the consequent refusal of the government to directly address the problem explains the cause for ''national shame'' that the PM speaks of. But even if he is finally reading and recognizing the truth that has been staring everybody in the face, he is unlikely to do very much about it. Given his conviction, he would, of course, do little about looking for alternatives to capitalism. What is more, those same convictions would work against reversing the neoliberal trajectory he has put the country on since 1991. In the event, he would find it impossible to put even the shadow of a human face on India's inequalising growth. The country, therefore, would have to live in shame … till the UPA and similar governments are replaced by one committed to a more people-centred development trajectory.
Releasing the report, the Prime Minister declared this this was a ''national shame''. Nobody can disagree. Child undernutrition of this magnitude after close to 65 years of independent national development is indeed a shame. And what is even more shameful is that in the period over the last twenty years, when India was reportedly ''shining'' because GDP growth had risen significantly, this failure could not be adequately addressed. Income growth accelerated, but the decline in the level of malnutrition was unsatisfyingly slow. That evidence has also forced the PM to recognise that despite impressive growth in national product in recent years, the level of malnutrition in the country had remained unacceptably high.
Given the obsession with GDP growth of the UPA government, this recognition that growth does not deliver even basic nutrition is indeed positive. But for those who have been observing the path of development India has pursued, especially since the 1990s, such evidence is by no means surprising. The evidence is common knowledge, as are the policies that can help address the problem.
There are many tendencies involved here that need to be separated to correctly understand the predicament the country faces. The first is of course the fundamental problem that capitalist accumulation driven by the search for profit never distributes justly the fruits of whatever growth it delivers. The rich grow richer but the poor tend to either lose out or gain only marginally from the additions to national income. Widespread malnutrition despite growth is one of the consequences. That tendency is exaggerated when the capitalism that we speak of emerges and develops in an environment where social and structural backwardness persists. Hence, rapid advances in human development, be it in terms of reduction in poverty, elimination of hunger and malnutrition or lessening of social deprivation, are never seen.
Thus, it is not surprising to see that improvements in social indicators and reduction in malnutrition are not directly associated with GDP growth or the level of GDP. Within India, for example, Sikkim reported the lowest rates of child malnutrition, while richer Madhya Pradesh had the highest. And, according to one source, the percentage of under weight children in Gujarat, one of India's richest and fast growing state, marginally increased between 2001 and 2006 to touch as much as 47 per cent.
Similarly, for a range of reasons, there are substantial differences in the improvement in social indicators across countries. 28 out of 37 countries in poor Sub-Saharan Africa have lower levels of per capita income than India. Yet they are characterised by lower levels of child malnutrition than India. The failure in India to implement land reform and reduce asset concentration, combined with the pernicious effects of caste-based exclusion, has resulted in forms of extreme inequality that ensure that large numbers remain nutritionally deprived even as India's income grows.
The problem is not confined to children. As economist A.K. Shiv Kumar notes: ''Birth weights of less than 2,500 grams are very closely associated with poor growth not just in infancy but throughout childhood. Estimates for India reveal that 20-30 per cent of all babies are born with low birth weight, suggesting that children begin to get malnourished in the womb.'' Malnutrition is being transferred from mother to child as well.
Given such tendencies under capitalism, it has been long accepted that governments in capitalist societies must intervene to directly address malnutrition for the social good. Well-fed and healthy children grow over time into a healthy and productive workforce, which contributes to national prosperity if they can find jobs. Evidence shows that government action aimed at reaching food to the poor, can substantially affect the level of malnutrition, resulting in the observed lack of correspondence between income levels and the level of malnutrition across states and countries. Such action would ensure access to food at affordable prices as well as put purchasing power in the hands those who are currently deprived of the ability to buy food. What is best is a combination of: (i) a universally accessible public distribution system providing essential items at subsidised prices; and (ii) a public works programme that ensures adequate employment at a reasonable minimum wage for those not absorbed by the capitalist growth trajectory.
On the surface, the UPA government appears on track to meet these, having enacted the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and poised to enact the Food Security Bill. But in practice, both in terms of the content of the bills and in terms of implementation on the ground, there is much to be desired. The NREGA is handicapped by a poor wage structure that falls short of even the minimum wage mandated in most states, as well as by inadequate allocations and spending. And the yet to be enacted Food Security Bill has been so diluted that it is likely to exclude a substantial section of the needy whose failure to access adequate food is responsible for the 42 per cent malnutrition among children.
The reason for this inadequacy in government action is of course liberalisation and ''economic reform''. Having provided huge direct and indirect tax concessions to the rich as part of an effort to encourage and promote private savings and investments, governments at both the centre and in the states are strapped for funds. In addition, all of them have been tied down by the philosophy of liberalisation which opposes deficit spending financed by borrowing. So either deficits are consciously sought to be reduced (as in the centre) or are kept down by law as in the states. If tax revenues are not growing adequately and governments cannot borrow, spending must be curbed. Experience shows that when expenditures have to be trimmed, it is capital expenditures and expenditures on social security that are axed. One obvious casualty is spending on schemes aimed at ensuring food security and rural employment. In sum, by engineering a fiscal crunch liberalisation militates against government policies aimed at countering the adverse effects of capitalist growth on hunger and nutrition. Growth benefits the richest few per cent at the top, while leaving untouched or even marginalising the majority.
But that is not all. The other casualty has been a scheme specifically designed, among other things, to reduce malnutrition among children. This is the Integrated Child Development Scheme, or ICDS, which was initiated in October 1975 in response to the evident problems of persistent hunger and malnutrition especially among children. Among the objectives of the scheme is that of improving the nutritional and health status of children in the age group 0-6 years. Since its inception, the ICDS has grown to become the world's largest early child development programme. The coverage of the Scheme has expanded rapidly, especially in recent years. Nevertheless, as is clear from the child malnutrition figures quoted earlier, for a scheme that has been in operation for three and a half decades, the benefits are still far too limited.
The basic reason is that not enough resources have been devoted to this scheme, to meet the huge requirement. Quite simply, there are not enough anganwadis or anganwadi workers to manage the scheme, and they do not have adequate resources to meet all the nutritional requirements of those pregnant and lactating mothers, infants and small children who need them. The ICDS has been operating on the underpaid labour of women in an undesirable and unsustainable fashion. While small increases in wages have been made, it still leaves them receiving less than minimum wages! Further, the Supreme Court has repeatedly instructed the government to make the scheme universal to all habitations, but the small or negligible increase in budgetary allocations to the ICDS ensures that this will not happen in the near future.
Put simply capitalist growth of the worst variety fostered by neoliberalism and the consequent refusal of the government to directly address the problem explains the cause for ''national shame'' that the PM speaks of. But even if he is finally reading and recognizing the truth that has been staring everybody in the face, he is unlikely to do very much about it. Given his conviction, he would, of course, do little about looking for alternatives to capitalism. What is more, those same convictions would work against reversing the neoliberal trajectory he has put the country on since 1991. In the event, he would find it impossible to put even the shadow of a human face on India's inequalising growth. The country, therefore, would have to live in shame … till the UPA and similar governments are replaced by one committed to a more people-centred development trajectory.
© MACROSCAN 2011