People's Democracy

Human Development In West Bengal

  Jayati Ghosh

The West Bengal experience provides an insight into the possibilities and limitations of a particular strategy of change at the State level.

IN the economic and political landscape of India, the state of West Bengal is probably unique. For more than a quarter century, it has been ruled by a Left Front government, whose electoral popularity has been undiminished and even increased recently, belying all the superficial notions of "anti-incumbency" that currently dominate political analyses.

This state government has been motivated by a different vision from that observed among most other state governments or the central government. This vision involved land reform, including both greater security of tenure to tenant cultivators and redistribution of vested land, and decentralisation and people's participation through panchayat institutions.

LAND REFORMS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH STIMULI

Not only does West Bengal dominate India in land distribution (which continues even at present) but there is greater protection afforded to cultivating tenants than anywhere else in India. It is the only state to have held regular elections to the panchayats every five years, and these panchayats have been given greater administrative responsibilities and become important instruments of social mobilisation. The panchayats played an important role in implementing and monitoring the land reforms, and these land reforms created a social dynamic which ensured that the panchayats have been more democratic and socially representative than in most other states. Both of these processes then contributed to the increase first of all in agricultural production, and then in other small-scale production.

Some specific features of West Bengal deserve to be noted. The Left Front government since 1977 had to deal with central governments led by opposing political formations, which obviously affected its ability to attract or extract any concessions from the centre. The location of the state in a relatively poor and economically stagnant region of India, as well as near relatively backward countries, meant that there were very few economic growth stimuli coming from the surrounding region. Also, the absence (due to historical factors) of a local bourgeoisie, with an inherent interest in investing within the state, meant that formal sector private investment played a relatively little role in the recent economic expansion of the state.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

The West Bengal experience is therefore especially interesting, as it provides an insight into the possibilities and limitations of a particular strategy of change at the state level, in a wider federal context of rather different orientation of both the central government and other state governments. The just-released West Bengal Human Development Report 2004 explores the implications of this strategy for economic growth, human development and the overall conditions of life of the people; asks why the positive effects have not been more pronounced; and considers the factors constraining human development in the state at present.

The report presents a mixed picture of the current state of human development in West Bengal. On the positive side, there are definite and important achievements which are possibly unmatched in any other state of India. The substantial progress in land reforms as well as the early and sustained efforts at increasing people's participation in government through panchayats provided important forces making for increased productive capabilities in agriculture and small-scale production generally, greater empowerment of the poor, more equity in basic consumption patterns and greater voice for ordinary people, including workers in urban and rural areas, women and Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe groups. These initiatives and the social forces they generated also provided much greater human security, helped the people of the state to avoid the spread of communal and caste-based disharmony that were part of its history and recently became more prevalent in other parts of India.

SMALL PRODUCER-LED GROWTH

In the last two decades, the state has experienced relatively rapid economic growth, compared with the rest of the country, and more importantly, unlike most of the rest of the country, this growth has been small producer-led in all the major sectors. The most remarkable acceleration of growth occurred in agriculture, as the state that was described as being in an "agrarian impasse" in the early 1980s, experienced the highest rates of crop output growth in the country. This was led by small peasants as land reforms reduced several institutional fetters to growth, making for more efficient use of land as well as greater utilisation of groundwater resources.

Industrial growth, which accelerated from the mid-1990s, was dominated by small-scale unregistered manufacturing units in rural areas, which more than doubled in number and employment even as the formal manufacturing sector stagnated. As in the rest of India, the services sector grew at the fastest rate, reflecting a combination of positive dynamism and low productivity refuge employment. The conundrum is that such small producer-led growth nevertheless failed to generate adequate productive employment to meet the requirements of the growing labour force.

INADEQUATE PROGRESS

This may be why progress in terms of some important human development indicators has been less than could be expected given these other achievements. The lack of adequate productive employment opportunities is probably the most pressing socio-economic problem in the state. The paid employment of women, which was already low by national standards, has diminished further in relative terms in the recent past. The spread of literacy and education has been slow, and the failure to achieve universal primary education thus far is a major disappointment. Inequalities of access to education according to gender and social category, and by region, are still considerable, despite recent attempts to reduce these imbalances.

Similarly, while health and nutrition outcome indicators indicate a greater degree of equity across income groups than other states, gender differences remain important and there are lacunae and inadequacies in public delivery systems for both preventive and curative health. In both education and health, the quality of public service delivery remains a serious concern. Environmental conditions, especially water and air pollution and land degradation, are of growing concern. Regional imbalances within the state continue to be significant.

SIGNIFICANT ISSUES

The experience of West Bengal highlights three significant issues that have crucial implications for human development anywhere. The first is the inherent difficulty of an autonomous development trajectory within a constituent province of a country, even with a federal system of government, and the role of broader macroeconomic processes in determining outcomes even within the state. While state governments in India have substantial responsibilities in terms of the provision of physical infrastructure as well as social services, they have relatively limited powers in terms of resource mobilisation and policies that affect macroeconomic processes.

The reduced flow of resources to state governments from the centre since the early 1990s — and the increased salary payments due to Pay Commission awards — have adversely affected most state governments in India. The adoption of neo-liberal policies by the central government entailed a reduction even in state governments' tax-GDP ratios. The restrictions imposed by the RBI upon domestic borrowing by state governments created a much tighter budget constraint.

In addition, macroeconomic processes such as the stagnation of employment opportunities, the adverse effects of trade liberalisation on small producers, the collapse of rural institutional credit and the effective disintegration of the Public Distribution System, had direct and indirect effects upon the conditions of life and human development in the state.

This second issue is the importance of mobilising resources for systematic public intervention. The paucity of resources for public intervention in these crucial areas remains one of the most significant constraining factors upon human development in this state. One way of dealing with the resource constraint has been to try and reduce the actual cost of new expenditure in these areas, through new interventions that effectively circumvent the salary and other expenditure requirements, as well as some of the bureaucratic controls, of existing systems of delivery. These are evident in both health and education, through for example the alternative schooling created by the Shishu Shiksha Kendras as well as the proposed schemes for panchayat-controlled health units rather than department-controlled primary health centres. These schemes typically involve much lower remuneration and non-permanent contracts to service deliverers such as teachers and health workers, which is why they can be undertaken at much lower cost. While they may be necessary transitional measures, they are far from the ideal solution, which would involve more resources being made available to locally accountable public service delivery systems.

This leads to the third issue, relating to the crucial two-way relationship between institutional change and economic processes. The strengthening of public health conditions and increasing the access to education of the poor and other disadvantaged groups are both important means of ensuring that the balance of class forces remains tilted in a positive direction. But it may be unrealistic to expect previous institutional change to continue to deliver positive results in the new environment: it will be necessary to undertake further innovations in institutional mechanisms and delivery systems, in order to ensure universal access and improved quality of services. Increasing the direct administrative control of locally elected bodies over these local delivery systems is likely to play a positive role in this regard. Strengthening the mechanisms by which the local bodies themselves are more responsive to local people's requirements may also be necessary.

Two crucial planks of a forward-looking strategy therefore are increasing the efforts for resource mobilisation to enable more state government spending in necessary areas, and strengthening local institutions to ensure the better delivery of public services.