Short Abstract:

Modern South Asia is a region of sharp contrasts. Despite soaring economic growth rates, even poorer South Asian neighbours – especially Bangladesh and Nepal – have surpassed India on several social indicators. This book therefore seeks to analyse the puzzle of how some South Asian regions have achieved exceptional human development, while large parts of northern India have lagged behind.

Long Abstract:

UNEQUAL: Why India Lags Behind Its Neighbours (Westland Books: Chennai, November 2023)

Since economic liberalisation in the nineties, the average Indian has grown vastly richer. But, now puzzlingly, women in most South Asian neighbours — Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives — live longer. Travelling in the lush countryside of rural Bangladesh, 78-year-old grandmother Haseena Khatun whom I met and ordinary Bangladeshis like her, despite being poorer are quietly overtaking many Indians in the quality of their lives with better health, nutrition and even education.

To unravel this unusual puzzle, with the capabilities approach as the backbone, this book is based on my extensive five-year doctoral research at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences across four countries. Written lucidly with anecdotes which offer a mix of travelogue-style insights and rigorous analysis, this book distinctly seeks to reach a larger readership, especially in policy circles beyond academia. The research adopts the 'historical comparative' method to analyse two contiguous geographical regions – Eastern Neighbours and Southern Supermodels.

Eastern Neighbours

The first part of this book decodes how Nepal and Bangladesh have begun to overtake India, especially Bihar, across the border. To unearth their successes, I conducted a unique survey across eighty villages with a team of forty local women

in Bangladesh, Nepal and Bihar. We collected information in three different languages from 1600 households and more than 200 schools and health centres. The results clearly show that Bangladeshis and Nepalis are leagues ahead. One common trait is their ability to dilute social inequalities of class, caste and gender. Investments in schools and hospitals, along with waves of socio-political reform movements have slowly but surely borne fruit.

On the other hand, Bihar and northern India lag behind due to the grip of multi-dimensional inequalities. Without wealth tax, India’s economic growth is increasingly being cornered by millionaires. Caste discrimination, too, remains rife. Gender inequalities also abound and Dalit women on the margins bear the brunt.

Southern Supermodels

However, as Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of India’s constitution had pinpointed, there is a ‘vast difference between the North and the South.’ So, the second part of this analysis based solely on archival research investigates why not only Sri Lanka (1830-1977), but the Indian states of Kerala (1820 -1975) and Tamil Nadu (1916 to date) at their peak were able to achieve outstanding social advances. Sri Lankan women, for example, were the first in Asia to earn the right to vote barely three years after the success of the British suffragettes. As early as 1817, the Queen of Travancore (which is now in modern Kerala) had also committed to funding the education of all citizens. So, multiple waves of iconic social and women’s movements in these southern neighbours have been key to their historic transformations.

Bridging Inequalities

In sum, this book shows that even India’s poorer neighbours are racing ahead in social development. Their excellent networks of primary healthcare clinics, village schools and toilets have transformed citizens’ lives. Women in Bangladesh and Nepal are also more likely to both work outside the home and hold seats in Parliament. Social reform movements to dissolve multiple class, caste and gender inequities have fuelled these advances.

In India, on the other hand, despite more than two decades of a booming economy, 38 per cent of toddlers remain stunted due to malnutrition, at least 50 million schoolchildren can barely read their textbooks, and 250 million adults are illiterate.

The quality of life in the northern states such as Bihar is particularly stilted. The fury of the pandemic has intensified these woeful inequalities. But, the successes of Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the south, since the last century, do show that even within India development transformations are indeed possible. However, governments must commit to concrete investments in social welfare and bridging social inequities. Else, India cannot dream of being a superpower.

The sleeping giant can learn much from her South Asian neighbours.