Laloo Yadav beats Nehru hollow

Many critics of globalisation and economic reform complain that fast economic growth in the last two decades has been concentrated in a few fortunate states, and that the most backward ones have not benefited. Tears have been shed at the plight of the backward states, and at the supposedly pitiless logic of globalisation which makes the poor poorer and rich richer. The moaning and groaning is not limited to leftist critics. A reformist critic like Lord Meghnad Desai said at a recent lecture that Bihar had stagnated and experienced virtually no development for 15 years under Laloo Yadav. Really? Our table shows that Bihar is near the bottom of the growth league. Yet the state averaged 4.66% growth per year in the decade 1980-91, and 4.89% in the 12 years from 1993-94 to 2004-05, the latest period for which the CSO gives state-level data. This was the period when Laloo ruled. Clearly, Bihar is a relatively poor performer. Yet 4.89% growth under Laloo can hardly be called zero development. It is much faster than the 3.5% that India averaged under Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Nobody ever claimed that Nehru pushed India into stagnation, or that India suffered zero development under him. Indeed, leftists hark back with nostalgia to those golden days of socialism. Let’s face it: for all its many shortcomings, Bihar under Laloo grew faster than India under Nehru. Indeed, Bihar has been growing faster than Punjab, which used to be India’s richest state. As our table shows, between 1993-94 and 2003-04, Punjab grew at only 4.39% annually. This was slower than in other backward states such as Orissa (4.86%) and Madhya Pradesh (4.55%). Clearly, globalisation and economic reform have not simply made the rich grow richer. The states with the best connectivity have grown fastest. But even the weakest performers have grown rapidly by world standards, and by India’s own historical standards. Bihar has the lowest literacy rate among major Indian states. Yet, while India’s overall literacy improved by roughly 23% in the decade 1991-2001, Bihar’s improved by 27%. That cannot be called a decade of lost development. By some yardsticks, Bihar exceeds the national average. Bihar’s infant mortality rate of 61 per 1,000 in 2002 was better than the national average of 63 per 1,000, and better than the 62 per 1,000 recorded by relatively developed states like Andhra Pradesh and Haryana. Bihar’s life expectancy for males, 65.66 years, is actually higher than the national average of 63.87 years. Now, the quality of Bihar’s data collection is suspect, so I would not read too much into these figures. Yet the data suggest that it is absurd to claim that Bihar had little or no development under Laloo. Why does Laloo have such a terrible image? Partly because he likes it that way. For 15 years as chief minister he declared that his priority was not economic growth but social justice, especially caste justice. He did little to improve public investment. Instead he aimed to provide dignity and self-respect to the lower castes, and safety to Muslims. He succeeded well enough to win three elections in a row. Even the collapse of law and order and the rise of criminals linked to Laloo was seen, locally, as lower castes improving their market share of Bihar’s biggest business — crime. This was terrible for the investment climate, but not, apparently, for electoral outcomes.