Small, sick, listless children have long been India's scourge - "a national shame," in the words of its prime minister .... But Even after a decade of galloping economic growth, child malnutrition rates are worse here than in many sub-Saharan African countries, and they stand out as a paradox in a proud democracy.
Now I'm not about to take issue with the misery that is poverty, in India or elsewhere, but describing it as a paradox is wrong.
A paradox is an absurd statement that yields truth. There is nothing absurd here - that India is filled with grinding poverty that is unlikely to soon, if ever, reach the worst off in society is not hard to fathom. A country's economy, like its political system, is shaped (to a great extent) by its culture.
This is not about paradox. This is not even ironic. Poverty in India, much like in the US or Africa, is more about indifference than anything else. Maybe we read too much into "economics" and "democracy", two terms which are often used in the normative sense (we're a democracy - Yay), and forget neither has much to say about altruism. To a casual reader, the quoted passage may suggest that causality, that democracy should infer general well-being. I tend to think its the other way around, the fact of a strong economy or a vibrant democracy has little to say about how equitably the "general welfare" is spread about.
No comments:
Post a Comment