The UN’s MDGs can work only with a rights-based approach: Professor

Last month, leaders from 185 countries met in New York to take stock of progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — which include, among other things, eradicating poverty and hunger, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health — that were set in 2000 by the United Nations.

The aim was to achieve these goals by 2015. But 10 years down the line, the world is way behind targets in achieving these goals. In an interview with DNA, Prabhat Patnaik, professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University and vice-chairman of the Planning Board of Kerala, points out that the MDGs will fail because they don’t address the root cause of poverty. Excerpts:

What do you think of the approach taken by the MDGs? Is it valid, or is it flawed? For example, Goal No 1 is “Reduce extreme poverty by half”. But is it a realistic goal when policies that generate poverty are not identified and alternatives implemented?
The MDGs would have made more sense if the argument was to make them legally enforceable, universal rights. In the absence of that, no one can be punished if these goals are not fulfilled. So it is left hanging in the air. I am not saying they (the goals) should be imposed, but at least if they had indicated a philosophy whereby development goals were rights-based or linked to rights, then many countries would follow it up. Or there would have been protests inside countries, and that would be much more effective.

We ourselves are talking about right to education and right to food, but strictly speaking, these are not really rights. The Right to Education does not really define the quality of the education. The Right to Food is not even universal, and confined only to people below poverty line. We are moving towards a notion of rights which is flawed, but it is still better to have a rights-based approach to development than simply to set goals.

Do the MDGs address the problem of poverty at the level of root causes?
No, they don’t. For instance, poverty is closely linked to reduction in incomes for substantial segments of self-employed populations in the era of globalisation. Before that, the state had protected the peasants; they were protected from the vicissitudes of world market fluctuations, they were given subsidised credit, subsidised fertilisers, and assured prices.

I am not saying everybody benefited from it, but substantial segments did. Now that is gone.

Secondly, employment generation is nowhere near what the growth rate should dictate. The proportion of the unemployed to the employed has increased. Eight million peasants have come out of agriculture because it is no longer profitable. But what are they doing in the urban areas? It’s not as if eight million jobs have been created.

The suppression of the income of the self-employed and the small producers and the absence of enough employment are the two basic parts (that contribute to poverty), and they are both parts of the growth process. So to say let’s reduce poverty, but not interfere in the growth process doesn’t make much sense.

Given that the initiative for the MDGs came not from the South but from the North, and that these same countries are usually at loggerheads with the poorer nations over terms of trade, how seriously can one take the MDGs?
The MDGs are actually something imposed on the South by some do-gooding persons from the North. But in the process they are not winning any concessions from the North as far as the South is concerned.

We talk of neo-liberalism, but Obama is going protectionist. So the point is that the North changes the rules of the game at the drop of a hat while we tend to follow the rules set by them. And the MDG’s idea is that while we follow the rules of the game, we should arrive at some goals for which there is no instrument.

If the macroeconomic causes of poverty were taken into account, what would the real MDGs be?
I think in countries like India you cannot have a situation where the peasantry is destroyed and absorbed into the urban labourer class like it happened during the Industrial Revolution.

There is also a misreading of the history of the industrial revolution. It is not as if European industrialisation absorbed all those displaced.

Fifty million Europeans migrated to the New World. Those possibilities are not open to us.

The only way we can have development is by including peasant agriculture within its ambit. It has to be peasant agriculture-led. Far from the state withdrawing from it, peasant agriculture has to be protected and promoted. Growth has to be generated in the agricultural sector and when the market expands, industry will grow to meet that market.

Some critics say that the MDGs are intended to legitimise the policies implemented by the First World through the World Bank, IMF.
Fundamentally, the MDGs are a bit like a safety net. But the idea of safety net implies that someone is falling. You are trying to put some kind of human face on a process that is going on. You are not tackling the process itself.

The Goal No. 8 is to “develop a global partnership for development.” Given the current unequal relationship between first world economic powers and poor countries — how do you see this partnership taking shape?
One of the big processes going on today — this is true in India as well as China — is the dispossession of small producers from their lands by corporates. Now you can’t have a partnership between the corporates and the peasants, because after all the corporates are trying to dispossess them from their land. Who is going to monitor the partnership? What is the relative bargaining strength of the small producers and corporates? So any talk of partnership camouflages the process of dispossession. So I think this again tries to put a human face on something that is fundamentally damaging.

It is essential that the state looks after the interests of the poor, small producers, and the marginalised. This requires an orientation on the part of the state which is very different from the orientation of a neo-liberal state. You cannot have a neo-liberal state and demand all sorts of concessions as far as corporate capital is concerned, and expect the same state to be looking after the interests of the poor and marginalised. States are vying with one another to get capital. According to a Hindu report, Gujarat has paid Rs31,000 crore in concessions to the Tatas to get the Nano plant to Gujarat. If you spend Rs31,000 crore you’ve no money for a public health system or food distribution. So the orientation of the state is important.  The MDGs are completely bypassing the question of orientation of the state.

A big proportion of the Third World resources that could be used to alleviate poverty is sucked into debt servicing. Wouldn’t the MDGs be better achieved if the debts were written off?
Writing off the debts is one thing. But these days a lot of debts are in the form of hot money inflows that you cannot really use. In India we have this huge Forex reserve because FIIs are investing money. If you use that money for any development purposes then you are borrowing short to lend long. This can get you into an East Asia kind of crisis.

In effect what you do is hold resources. You find very large amounts of reserves being held by Third World countries, but which earns them a pittance. On the reserves we currently hold, people bringing it in earn 15-16% returns. The RBI earns about 1-1.5% returns on the reserves it holds.

So there is a huge drain that is taking place at that level. In fact, the autonomy of the state requires capital control. If finance can move out any time at the drop of a hat, the state is forever worried about keeping the confidence of the investors up. You can’t follow any policy except the one they want you to follow. It’s not just debt write-offs, but also the possibility of capital controls, which can take various forms — you can have a tie-in clause where the investors bringing in money must be there for a minimum period.

The deadline for the achievement of the MDGs is 2015. How successful do you think we’ll be in achieving those goals?
There is one indicator of material well-being and that is the per capita food consumption — direct and indirect. If you take direct and indirect food grain consumption in India, you find that we are worse today than what we were 57 years ago.

That being the case, far from moving towards achieving our goals we are retrogressing. I don’t see any possibility of achieving these goals.

What should be the role of civil society, NGOs and state vis-a-vis programmes for social uplift such as the MDGs?
One part of the civil society’s role is that they must put pressure on the state. But a deeper issue arises here. Typically, the state has been handing over resources to civil society organisations to manage many of these things. This is not good enough. Development must be rights-based. If it is rights-based, it must be universal and justiciable. The citizens should be able to take the state to the court. The government tries to abdicate its responsibility by handing it over to civil society organisations. I can’t take some civil society organisation to court because they derive their mandate from the government.

If you take the example of physically challenged children, aid for them is routed through civil society organisations. Or look at health insurance. Instead of a public health system, you have health insurance schemes. What happens is that because insurance premium has been paid, you don’t build the public institutions.

In essence, you are privatising health. Once you do that, the private sector will be charging high prices. Again, this is siphoning away of public resources to private health facilities under the guise of health insurance schemes.

What is the significance of last month’s MDG Summit, according to you?
That people are talking about these things is good. There is a consciousness that trickle down is not happening. We are talking about something specific that has to be done about development.

That in itself indicates an advance of the debate compared to what it was 10 years ago. But still it hasn’t come anywhere close to where it should be if we are serious about these issues.