{"id":322,"date":"2005-05-05T00:10:49","date_gmt":"2005-05-04T13:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/2005\/05\/03\/a-beginners-guide-to-talking-about-reforms-and-the-poor\/"},"modified":"2005-05-04T19:07:25","modified_gmt":"2005-05-04T13:37:25","slug":"a-beginners-guide-to-talking-about-reforms-and-the-poor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200505\/a-beginners-guide-to-talking-about-reforms-and-the-poor\/","title":{"rendered":"A beginner’s guide to talking about reforms and the poor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Suppose that you want to learn about how the poor are doing under reforms. Without knowing anything about the reforms and how they’ve been doing, I can think of at least 3 possible inferences that I can draw from a study.
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
 <\/th>\nInference<\/th>\nPolicy change required<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/td>\nThe poor have done worse under reforms. There are more poor people than before. <\/td>\nReverse the reforms. Go back to Socialism. <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\nThe lot of the poor has improved marginally under reforms. But when you look at the situation in detail, you learn that the situation of the poor has improved the most where the reforms have proceeded the most. It has improved the least, and even worsened in some cases, where the reforms have not taken place. <\/td>\nReform faster. Don’t spend your time handwringing over whether to reform or not. Just go ahead and speed up the reforming. <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\nThe poor are “falling behind” because the reforms are moving too fast <\/td>\nKeep up the reforming, but slow them down.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

I have not listed all possible inferences. I may not even be correct in saying that the policy changes on the right will necessarily follow from the inferences on the left. All I am doing is pointing out the importance of being precise. As you can see, small changes in what you conclude on the left hand side lead to drastically different<\/b> prescriptions on the right hand side. If you imply that the state of the poor has gotten worse when you actually mean that it hasn’t improved fast enough, you are actually doing a disservice to the debate. If your article has any impact, then it will result in slowing or reversing of reforms and it will be the poor that will be hurt the most. <\/p>\n

But that is what Dilip D’Souza<\/a> has done. Read the article (which has also been published in the Hindu<\/a>). Without reading his comments on Yazad’s post<\/a> What is the overwhelming impression that one gets? He says that he is seeing more poor people than before. He doubts the figures that [according to my calculation ] say that there are 4 crore fewer poor people than 15 years back. Yes, he says, reforms must continue. But he has also scorned the claims of the free-market reformers who say that free market reforms are the only way to get a country out of poverty, so the possibility exists that he is talking of some other kind of reforms. <\/p>\n

It is not just Dilip. Every single article I have read that “raises questions” about the impact of the reforms on the poor follows the same pattern. The author is invariably ambiguous about the claim he is making, whether he is saying that reforms have hurt the poor<\/b>, that they have left the poor behind<\/b> or that they have not reached the poor at the speed he would have liked<\/b>. This might look like a small difference in wording, but the lessons to take away from them will be poles apart. The author may not know which inference to draw. But there is no excuse for failing to recognise<\/b> that there is a difference. <\/p>\n

The usual reason given for making alarmist arguments is that it is a way of raising an alarm. We are getting too complacent about liberalisation. Saying “It has not reached the poor! In fact the number of poor has increased!” even though the statement is an exaggeration, is a way of making people sit up and take notice. <\/p>\n

But what is the point of raising an alarm that has a 66% chance of being misinterpreted? This is not an alarm in a literal sense after all, where the need to make a loud noise signifying danger is more important than getting across in words what the danger is. Surely, the message of the danger can be conveyed in precise words?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suppose that you want to learn about how the poor are doing under reforms. Without knowing anything about the reforms and how they’ve been doing, I can think of at least 3 possible inferences that I can draw from a study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}