Washington consensus hype and neo-liberal hype are rampant in newspapers, magazines and the electronic media in countries like India where rural economies with overwhelming poverty and elitist urban economies exist side by side. Never mind the fact that few good mechanisms exist for trickle-down to transfer the benefits of urban, service-sector growth to the rural areas that are dependent on agriculture in countries like India. Never mind the yawning gap between per capita urban sector growth and per capita rural sector growth. Never mind the existence of migration from rural to urban areas that create severe strains on the urban economy and urban infrastructure. Never mind the fact that the rural sectors are teeming with unskilled and illiterate labor that is ill-prepared to take advantage of any trickle-down mechanisms that may exist.
Year-on-year high growth rates are a modern phenomenon, something that began with the Industrial Revolution. As for per capita growth rates, decrease in population growth rates and population stabilization have also been crucial, and the provision of basic health care has proved crucial in this regard. However, this kind of transformation has not happened uniformly around the globe, no matter how loudly certain opinion makers shout that the world has become flat. The middle class economy has become flat around the world to some extent. However, the prevalence of mass poverty and food insecurity is proof that the modern world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is far from being flat in the field of economic prosperity or economic entitlement. And we are not talking about the run-of-the-mill income distribution kind of non-flatness. We are talking about two-tiered economies where significant, if not total, decoupling between urban and rural sectors is a reality. But there is an entire opinion-making industry that is pushing for this myth of flatness as the reality of the world we live in. Journalists, heads of state and experts trained in elitist institutions and steeped in ultra-capitalistic logic speak of a world where economic growth is the panacea for all the remaining economic problems. Never mind the fact that several of the countries with significant levels of poor populations like India have not followed the same development trajectory as Western nations. Never mind the fact that agricultural technology and literacy levels have had widely dissimilar histories in advanced Western economies and in countries like India. And never mind the fact that basic food security is a matter of serious concern in countries like India while it is a topic that is not even on the radar screen in the advanced economies.
While all this noise about growth and trickle-down is taking place despite the glaring disconnect with reality in countries like India, there is a real possibility that governmental apathy and ineptitude in countries like India can lead to the revival of some old economic bugbears. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Robert Malthus talked about population being stabilized by a balance between several forces like reproduction, disease, food availability and war. Two hundred years have passed since Malthus propounded his ideas. Since then, the world has seen unprecedented economic transformation and the introduction of amazing technologies. Terms like “ the post-industrial society “ have sunk into the public consciousness in the advanced economies, the same economies that produce the economists who dole out economic advice to governments of poorer countries and who often prescribe ready-made formulas to these poorer countries during times of economic stress. Malthusian ideas have become irrelevant to the noise-makers. They are regarded as relics of a past era of economic want that is best forgotten. However, those who follow the economic scene in countries like India know that the complex interactions between population, economic want, health and food security are mechanisms that are only too relevant to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Sub-Saharan Africa presents a similar picture.
The world population is expected to stabilize around 9 billion or 10 billion depending on the projection you want to go by. Most of the arable land in the world has been brought under cultivation. Converting pasture land or forests to agricultural land has its own serious problems. Combine this with the fact that the food production capabilities of the world, current and projected, are dependent on inputs of inorganic fertilizers like phosphates and nitrates. Consider the fact that there are limited reserves of phosphate rock, the primary source of phosphate fertilizers. Consider also the fact that most of these reserves occur in the United States, Russia, China and Morocco. Consider the fact that the United States is expected to become a net importer of phosphate rock in the next few decades. Consider the fact that China’s need to provide agricultural output for its own population may well mean that its phosphate rock reserves may become unavailable for the rest of the world. The situation in Russia may not be all that different. Consider the fact that extraction of off-shore phosphate rock reserves may be uneconomical. You have a situation where, in the next few decades, the world’s agricultural output may be in peril due to lack of inorganic fertilizers. The technology of organic substitutes for phosphate and nitrate fertilizers is not well developed.
Malthus will most likely rear his head again, albeit in a different form than in the early eighteenth century. And elitist policies being pursued and pushed around the world do not inspire confidence that the lives of poor people will be free from Malthusian effects very easily.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
Year-on-year high growth rates are a modern phenomenon, something that began with the Industrial Revolution. As for per capita growth rates, decrease in population growth rates and population stabilization have also been crucial, and the provision of basic health care has proved crucial in this regard. However, this kind of transformation has not happened uniformly around the globe, no matter how loudly certain opinion makers shout that the world has become flat. The middle class economy has become flat around the world to some extent. However, the prevalence of mass poverty and food insecurity is proof that the modern world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is far from being flat in the field of economic prosperity or economic entitlement. And we are not talking about the run-of-the-mill income distribution kind of non-flatness. We are talking about two-tiered economies where significant, if not total, decoupling between urban and rural sectors is a reality. But there is an entire opinion-making industry that is pushing for this myth of flatness as the reality of the world we live in. Journalists, heads of state and experts trained in elitist institutions and steeped in ultra-capitalistic logic speak of a world where economic growth is the panacea for all the remaining economic problems. Never mind the fact that several of the countries with significant levels of poor populations like India have not followed the same development trajectory as Western nations. Never mind the fact that agricultural technology and literacy levels have had widely dissimilar histories in advanced Western economies and in countries like India. And never mind the fact that basic food security is a matter of serious concern in countries like India while it is a topic that is not even on the radar screen in the advanced economies.
While all this noise about growth and trickle-down is taking place despite the glaring disconnect with reality in countries like India, there is a real possibility that governmental apathy and ineptitude in countries like India can lead to the revival of some old economic bugbears. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Robert Malthus talked about population being stabilized by a balance between several forces like reproduction, disease, food availability and war. Two hundred years have passed since Malthus propounded his ideas. Since then, the world has seen unprecedented economic transformation and the introduction of amazing technologies. Terms like “ the post-industrial society “ have sunk into the public consciousness in the advanced economies, the same economies that produce the economists who dole out economic advice to governments of poorer countries and who often prescribe ready-made formulas to these poorer countries during times of economic stress. Malthusian ideas have become irrelevant to the noise-makers. They are regarded as relics of a past era of economic want that is best forgotten. However, those who follow the economic scene in countries like India know that the complex interactions between population, economic want, health and food security are mechanisms that are only too relevant to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Sub-Saharan Africa presents a similar picture.
The world population is expected to stabilize around 9 billion or 10 billion depending on the projection you want to go by. Most of the arable land in the world has been brought under cultivation. Converting pasture land or forests to agricultural land has its own serious problems. Combine this with the fact that the food production capabilities of the world, current and projected, are dependent on inputs of inorganic fertilizers like phosphates and nitrates. Consider the fact that there are limited reserves of phosphate rock, the primary source of phosphate fertilizers. Consider also the fact that most of these reserves occur in the United States, Russia, China and Morocco. Consider the fact that the United States is expected to become a net importer of phosphate rock in the next few decades. Consider the fact that China’s need to provide agricultural output for its own population may well mean that its phosphate rock reserves may become unavailable for the rest of the world. The situation in Russia may not be all that different. Consider the fact that extraction of off-shore phosphate rock reserves may be uneconomical. You have a situation where, in the next few decades, the world’s agricultural output may be in peril due to lack of inorganic fertilizers. The technology of organic substitutes for phosphate and nitrate fertilizers is not well developed.
Malthus will most likely rear his head again, albeit in a different form than in the early eighteenth century. And elitist policies being pursued and pushed around the world do not inspire confidence that the lives of poor people will be free from Malthusian effects very easily.
by C. Jayant Praharaj