India Can Learn from China
It is worth mentioning that India lags far behind China in battling poverty and in advancing living standards such as health, education and other social conditions. Some statistics about China and India are relevant here. Life expectancy in China is 73.5 years compared with India’s 64.4. The mortality rate for children under one year was 40.5 per 1,000 births for Indians and 9.2 for the Chinese in 2015. The WHO data show India’s maternal mortality rate (MMR) currently is at 174 per 100,000 live births and 27 in China. The mean years of schooling in India were estimated to be 4.4 years, compared with 7.5 years in China. A United Nations report said China’s adult literacy rate is 94%, compared with India’s 74%.
The 1998 Nobel Laureate Indian economist, Amartya Sen in several of his works repeatedly praised China’s human development like education, literacy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, health care that ensure well-being of the people. Professor Sen noted, “As a result of India’s effort to improve the schooling of girls, its literacy rate for women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four has clearly risen; but that rate is still not much above 80%, whereas in China it is 99%. One of the serious failures of India is that a very substantial proportion of Indian children are, to varying degrees, undernourished (depending on the criteria used, the proportion can come close to half of all children), compared with a very small proportion in China. Only 66% of Indian children are immunized with triple vaccine (diphtheria/pertussis/tetanus), as opposed to 97% in China.” (Quality of Life: India vs. China, Amartya Sen, May 12, 2011 Issue)
Since the independence, year after year, India’s anti-poverty programmes are getting bigger without getting better. The World Bank report found despite the billions of dollars spent by the Indian government, the benefits of welfare schemes often don’t reach the poor. The public distribution system which aims to deliver food to the poor at a discount through fair price shops is an abject failure due to bureaucratic corruption and poor administration. The blunt truth is that India’s poverty alleviation programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Pardhan Mantri Gramodaya Yojana (PMGY), the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY), the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) and the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, as well as other welfare schemes fail to reach the downtrodden. The outcomes in each programme are poor.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitive Index, India has gone up from the 60th position to the 39th position in 2016-17. But the stark contrast is that the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington has ranked India 97 among 118 countries on the Global Hunger Index-2016. The Global Hunger Index report also predicts that India will fail to achieve its Sustainable Development Goals target of ending hunger by 2030.
China is far ahead of India in terms of poverty reduction and improvement in social indicators such as life expectancy, health, per capita income level, education, infant mortality, and so on. India’s various welfare schemes will get a tremendous boost if it can learn lessons from China’s experience and achievements in poverty alleviation through the Southwest Poverty Reduction Project, the Poor Rural Communities Development Project, the Guangxi Rural Poverty Alleviation Pilot Project, the Qinba Mountains Poverty Reduction Project, the Gansu and Inner Mongolia Poverty Reduction Project, to mention a few.
China, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, has made extraordinary strides in growth and poverty reduction in a very well-planned manner within a very short period of time. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) calculates that China has contributed 76% of all global poverty reduction to date. China has been playing a greater role in implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), benefitting the international community by sharing its model and methods.
Rabi Sankar Bosu isSecretary of New Horizon Radio Listeners’ Club, West Bengal, India
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn/Chinagate.cn.