You will also find horror stories with the CPM, and this is coming from a
CPM sympathetizer (that's me). From a distance everything looks
sanitized. The ground reality is far more complex.
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Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor
Comparative International Development
University of Washington Campus Box 358436
1900 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402, USA
Phone: (253) 692-4462
Fax : (253) 692-5718
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On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Brad DeLong wrote:
> >Brad says
> >
> >>>Brad DeLong wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>Rates of growth of GDP per capita, India:
> >>>>
> >>>>1950-1980 1.1% per year
> >>>>1980-1990 3.3% per year
> >>>>1990-2000 4.2% per year
> >>>>
> >>>>At the pace of the last decade, India's real productivity is
> >>>>doubling every seventeen years (compared to a doubling time of 65
> >>>>years before 1980).
> >>>
> >>>Any evidence on how this growth has been distributed? Are the
> >>>bottom 20-40% any better off, or is it mainly captured by a thin
> >>>urban middle class and the IT sector?
> >>>
> >>>Doug
> >>
> >>Average life expectancy in India is 63 years, 44% of Indians over
> >>15 are illiterate, 53% of Indians under 5 are malnourished. India's
> >>poverty rate appears to have held constant over the decade of the
> >>1990s. But I don't see how anything is going to push India's
> >>poverty rate down until education improves.
> >
> >Were you an Indian, you would have to root for the Communist Party
> >of India (Marxist), then.
> >
> >***** ...Despite overwhelming factors (cultural issues,
> >population, resources), India's literacy is steadily improving.
> >India's literacy rate at the time of independence (1947) was only
> >14% and female literacy was abysmally low at 8%. In 1981 the
> >literacy rate was 36% and in 1991 it was 52% (males 65%, females
> >39%). The southern state of Kerala was the first to reach "100%
> >literacy" for a city (Kottayam 1989), then a district (Ernakulam
> >1990), and finally the whole state (1991)...
>
> Yes. The CPI(M) has done amazing things as the government of Kerala...
>
>
> Brad DeLong
>
>
