India Asks, Should Food Be a Right for the Poor?

India’s persistent inability to make government work for the poor has set off a debate over whether to dismantle an inefficient, decades-old food distribution system and try something radical.

http://nyti.ms/ahSOAx

Given the above, some of the researchers have concluded that since private sector can reach (some of) the poor, can do a better job of providing quality education, and at cheaper rates (more efficiently), the case for rethinking the role of public sector in primary and secondary education becomes stronger.

At the same time, none of these publications go far enough to make the case for private provision of education only. They acknowledge that though quality of private education is better than public, it is not good on any absolute scale. They also acknowledge that a) private education, being mostly provided on for-profit basis, charges fees that though low still act as a barrier to access for the poor, and b) private schools tend to locate in richer and more densely populated areas. So, a number of these researchers have suggested that a) private education should be encouraged and in places where we have a number of private schools government should facilitate access by the poor through instruments like vouchers, b) public education should be seen as a compliment to private education, and c) public schools should try to serve locations and people who cannot or do not have access to private education.

But there are problems with this view of education and educational provision. Education, at primary and secondary level, according to our constitution (and this holds for a number of other constitutions as well) is considered to be a “right” of people. That is, we, the government and the society, owe an obligation to the children of Pakistan: they have a right to demand access to reasonable quality educational facilities for themselves, irrespective of their income, geographical location and other caveats. It is true that the constitution does not recognise the right to education as a fundamental right, and so far the courts have not taken the right to education as justiciable (though Indian courts did it a while back and then the government moved a constitutional amendment to recognise the right to education as a basic right) but it is recognised as a right nonetheless. In fact, given the evidence on the importance of education for functional reasons (i.e. given the connections between education and poverty reduction as well as national growth) it is hard how one can see the right to Life, accepted as a basic right in all constitutions, without a right to basic education. But leaving this debate aside, given that education is a right, the responsibility of the government cannot be seen as just a compliment to the private sector. It is the government that is primarily responsible for ensuring that all children get access to reasonable educational facilities.

The story gets a lot more complicated when we allow for the fact that a) millions of children are out of schools currently, b) millions more drop out before they get any education, c) millions are going to poor quality educational institutions, d) poverty and access are linked negatively, e) poverty and dropouts are linked positively, f) development of an area and access are also linked negatively. And we know that Pakistan does not have any credible social protection nets, safety nets, ways of identifying the poor, ways of monitoring the poor or targeting subsidies to the poor. So how can we ensure that the private sector, suitably complimented by the public, can be made to provide quality education to all children across the country?

We have to grant that most of the public sector education system, and across the country, is currently dysfunctional and of very poor quality: it is underfunded, mismanaged, has poor standards, does not have proper monitoring and evaluation systems, does not have proper human resource systems, the teachers working the system have low morale, provision of infrastructure is patchy and on average poor, provision of software (books, furniture and so on) is also poor and there is a general lack of direction and motivation in the education departments at all levels. It is no wonder that any comparison with the private schools shows that private schools are better, and that, given the choice and resources, people choose to send their children to private schools. But, given the responsibility of the state with regard to education, and the scale of the issue we are talking about, are the conclusions about the role of private-public given above the only ones or the right ones to draw?

Here is one alternative. Given that private for-profit as well as non-governmental sector (NGOs) can deliver quality education, given that the public sector is able to deliver reasonable quality education across the world (from Canada and US to Sri Lanka and China), why can the Pakistani government not fix the public education system? Clearly there are no impossibility issues at play here. Why should we not draw the conclusion, from the research quoted, that the imperative to improve the quality of public education has become even more urgent and pressing now, given the evidence that it can be done, and at lower cost, and in some of the same areas where public sector is failing. The scale at which we need to provide education, the importance of regulating its content as well as quality, the importance of ensuring that each child has a “fair” and “equitable” chance of getting education, all of the above imply that we cannot let the matter be managed by the private sector, while the public sector complements services. It has to be the other way around. The public sector education system has to set the minimum standards, it has to monitor and enforce these standards, and it has to ensure that every child has a certainty of receiving education of that minimum standard at least. If private sector wants to complement the services provided and can offer alternatives by raising the bar for the public sector that is wonderful. Those who can afford to and/or are willing to pay for it can choose the private over the public then.

In the 1980s and 1990s people used to argue that the poor performance of the public sector, in certain areas, was justification enough for privatisation. But the experience of the last couple of decades has shown us that this is a poor way of selecting which areas to privatise. Areas where there are large public good elements and/or significant non-competitive forces, privatisation with and/or without regulation and restraint, can be quite disastrous. Education is a very special area: due to its functional as well as rights-based importance. If commercial areas were a problem, blind and unthinking support of private education, at the cost of making the public system better, can and will be even more disastrous.

Private education is surely here to stay, and it should be allowed to flourish and expand. But private education should not be seen as a panacea for the education sector problems that we face. Private education is not the solution for our national education problems and the fact that private education is “better” than the current public sector education should not be taken as a reason for jettisoning public sector, rather it should be seen as a challenge for the public sector: we have to get the public sector in order. Rather than lessen the pressure on government, the way I read it, the quoted research gives us even more reason to increase the pressure on government to improve the quality and extent of provision of public education. If we are to address the problems of the education system in Pakistan, there seems to be a need for advocacy for creating a movement for demanding quality from the public sector education system.

E-mail: faisal@nation.com.pk

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/09-Jun-2008/Public-and-private-education

I think very few of us would be comfortable saying that letting the child die is an option they would take, and we are likely to be very uncomfortable being in the company of people who would say that. I know I would be. Most people would probably save the child, though with a lot of ache about losing their new car: their pride and joy. Letting the child die would be ‘morally reprehensible’, and possibly legally too (I am not a lawyer but for my example it does not matter whether it is so or not): you are letting great harm come to another human when you could have saved them with no bodily danger to yourself and with only financial cost to you, but a cost that you can easily bear (remember this is not my means of earning transport…but my ‘feel good’ car). Most of us, I hope, will agree, that the right action to do, is to save the child (if it helps, think that it is your child and someone else standing there by the track…what would you like him/her to do?).

But the strangest thing is that we are allowing exactly the situation described above to occur around us all the time. And all of us know of it, read about it and talk about it but most of us do not do anything about it. Only the other day we heard that a mother had killed two of her children and herself because she could not afford to pay for food and other necessities for the family in the meager salary that her husband was earning. Less than a week ago a working man had burnt himself to death because he could not service the loan he had taken from a bank and the bank’s collectors had been rude to the person’s sister and mother (the Finance Minister said, and on the floor of the Senate of the country, that this would be investigated fully).

We know thirty-five odd percent of Pakistanis are living below the poverty line: that is they are barely making enough to pay for their food. We know a significant number of the nation’s children suffer from malnutrition, a significant number do not have access to inoculations that they need to survive, a majority do not have access to basic health facilities that allow them to take care of even treatable conditions such as diarrhea, millions of them do not have access to safe drinking water, sewerage facilities and a safe environment, and tens of millions of our children do not have access to even basic education.

All of us know this. Are there many of us who are preferring to have our feel-good cars and other such non-essential expenditure when people are dying? Is this moral? Does this make a lot of us morally culpable and close to being murderers?

You will notice that the issue is not ‘essential expenditure’. What I need for my own essential expenditure, or for my family, probably has the same need-importance as anybody else. So that is not the issue here and we are not arguing that we should not be spending our money on our needs or saving some for the future. It is beyond the need that is the question. We thought most people would not have a problem ‘sacrificing’ the second car, however much they might mourn the demise of the car, when the choice was between human life and the car. The situation is exactly analogous: when the choice is between non-essential expenditure and human life, why do so many of us indulge in conspicuous consumption rather than in giving this money away to help others.

We should put in a few caveats. First, we are not talking of whether saving other people is the responsibility of the state or not. Even if you are paying all your taxes and have lived up to your legal obligation there, the issue is with what ‘you-as-an-individual’ spend on non-essentials. State’s failings are a separate topic for a separate article.

Second, we are not talking of money that people save for the future either. So the argument that I do not give away what is beyond my needs as I need to save that for the future does not apply here. We are not talking of what people save, though there is a moral question of what is appropriate level of savings for yourself or your family when others are dying, but let us leave that aside for another paper too. What is being talked about here is just the money spent on conspicuous consumption: the massive houses, the luxury cars, the airplanes, the lavish holidays, the extremely comfortable living, the excessive electronic gadgetry, the latest mobile phone sets, the overflowing wardrobes and the dozens of footwear that are almost never used.

There is no way of justifying that when you grant that allowing the child to die to save your car is wrong. If, of course, you say that you would have let that child die, then there is no quarrel with you…this article cannot help you.

Third, it is also clear that none of us can really hide behind the facetious argument that we cannot find deserving candidates to help. With a large number of NGOs (in nutrition, health, education, and so on) of good reputation working in the country, it is hard to argue that we cannot find one that would suit us. Furthermore, if one looked at one’s relatives, neighbourhood, and/or place of work, one is bound to find people who could use the extra rupee in a much more useful way than the rich could. With poverty levels at 35 percent odd, vulnerability levels at 70 percent odd, and with food inflation the way it has been for the last few years, it would be surprising if anyone in the country does not know a few people who could do better with some financial help.

There are millions of Pakistanis who are lucky enough, talented enough, or skilled enough to be in a bracket that allows them to earn more than what they need (including prudential level of savings) for themselves and their families. But a lot of us spend the ‘extra’ money on luxuries. When we know there are people who are dying of hunger and basic need deprivation out there, and in their millions, it is clearly immoral, whether it is illegal or not, to continue doing this.

Whether we call this an unrealistic picture or a utopian one or a strict one, it does not really matter, it is the truth. Most religious and secular moralities I know of would agree. Rather than change our notion of morality, should we not think of changing our behaviour?

E-mail: faisal@nation.com.pk

This article was originally published on the The Nation website.

“Acchay walay dayna“, I told him.

“Babu jee, jo pasand aaye lay lo“, he said.

I asked him where he was from.

“Barkat Market”, he said, naming a local market.

I persisted and asked him where he was from originally and he said Depalpur.

“Where’s that?”, I asked, displaying my all too obvious big city ignorance.

He didn’t seem to mind and explained to me where it was. I asked him how much I owed him and he said thirty rupees. I had learned that the asking price for anything in Pakistan, be it a house, a car, a DVD player, grocery, anything at all had no relation to what it was actually going to cost. It’s more like a wish that the merchant has and it’s the buyer’s job to bargain him down to whatever they feel its worth. Seeing his worn out donkey, his torn shalwar kameez and his cheerful demeanor though, I did not have the heart to haggle with him. I handed him the money and he slipped it into a broken wooden box lying next to the fruit.

“Meherbaani, babu jee“. I thanked him and left.

I had thought about giving him something extra but thought better of it. I had tried that one time in a local market when a little Afghan boy had approached me and tried to sell me a pack of chewing gum. He wanted five rupees. I handed him the five rupees but told him I didn’t want the gum. He threw the money in my face.

“Layna hai to lay, bheek nahin chahiyay“. I accepted the gum, rather ruefully.

As I drove home, I thought of countless children like them who wander the streets trying to scrape together a living. In a place like Lahore, they are vulnerable to neighborhood “goondas” who may rob them, assault them physically or sexually or both. If they resist, they may be beaten or killed. If the hoodlums don’t get them, the police might since they, too, respect only money and power. Yet, every morning they set out from their slums to see if they can make a living that day.

The next day, my father insisted on taking me to a couple of weddings. The time on the card said 8.30. We got to the first one at around 9.45 and the guests were just beginning to arrive. We sat around for a half and hour then headed off to a local hotel for the second one. There, women dripping with jewelry and obese men in suits a size too small for their bellies were gorging on dinner, cold drinks, ice cream and what not while white liveried waiters were scurrying about carrying drinks and plates. On the way back, we went our usual route past huge billboards
advertising cell phones, housing schemes, bank loans and the latest gadgets. I wondered as we drove home how many people spared a thought for the boy from Depalpur or the hundreds of millions like him in Pakistan
who are forced to migrate to the cities and eke out a living any way they can. How many survive, how many succumb to illness, accidents or the ever present criminals willing to exploit them in all ways imaginable. I looked for the boy again the next day but never saw him again. Every time I eat a bair though, I think of him.

According to the Millennium Project “More than one billion people in the world live on less than one dollar a day. In total, 2.7 billion struggle to survive on less than two dollars per day”. Eradication of poverty is a noble yet Utopian goal according to many. When Jeffery Sachs published his “The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time,” amid much fanfare it was considered by some as the answer to this perennial problem.

The book had a gusto that was infectious, a vision that was grand and a flair of a rock star (its introduction was written by Bono). According to Sachs who also works for the Millennium Project “Extreme poverty can be ended, not in the time of our grandchildren, but our time” – a lofty claim indeed. One of the key factors to end poverty is through aid given by rich countries. However, there are problems with this approach. There is often a disparity between the money pledged and the money actually donated. Also, the goal of optimal amount of aid as defined by 0.7% of the national income is rarely realized. An average American on the other hand thinks that the US gives about 25% of its budget in foreign aid (the actual number is less than 1%). A recent book by William Easterly, “The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good,” suggests that the world’s official aid agencies especially the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UN, have been peddling the same failed aid plans for the last 50 years or so. He is critical of the Sachs idea of big money and big push to end the poverty trap. Instead he makes a distinction between Searchers and Planners. Planners approach the problem from supply side, go big and mostly underachieve. The Searchers think small, piecemeal steps and bring about a slow change. According to him Searchers achieve the most in the end. Easterly does no go without a challenge though.Amartya Sen is pretty critical of him. The most serious charge against Easterly is not about his premise though. According to Sen his analysis falls short of academic standards. For example Sen points out that his statistical analysis fails to establish a negative association between economic aid and poverty. Sen goes on to say:

“Many such studies are also impaired by difficulties in identifying what is causing what. For example, a country’s economic distress may induce donors to give it more aid — which may, in terms of associative statistics, suggest a connection between aid and bad economic performance. But using such a correlation to prove the bad effects of aid turns the causal connection on its head. Easterly tries to avoid such pitfalls, but the statistical associations on which he draws for his comprehensive pessimism about the effects of aid do not offer a definitive causal picture.”Many such studies are also impaired by difficulties in identifying what is causing what. For example, a country’s economic distress may induce donors to give it more aid — which may, in terms of associative statistics, suggest a connection between aid and bad economic performance. But using such a correlation to prove the bad effects of aid turns the causal connection on its head. Easterly tries to avoid such pitfalls, but the statistical associations on which he draws for his comprehensive pessimism about the effects of aid do not offer a definitive causal picture.”

It is hard to prove negative or positive association in this sort of studies where there are too many variables involved. Often it is hard to measure progress or change in concrete terms. For some the answer lies in too-little-too-late approach by the donor countries while for others it is the corrupt and inefficient bureaucracies of the countries accepting donations that are to blame. We thus see two opposing paradigms pitted against each other. One is for big push and big money and the other is for piecemeal change that comes from within. The former premise appeals to most of the people in the third world and many whistle blowers and to people who are weary of big organizations like the World Bank, the IMF and the UN. The latter makes sense to most of the people in the Western world. Perhaps like many other debates this one is also too metaphysical to reach one true conclusion – perhaps the final answer lies in the eyes of the beholder.