题目：Income Inequality in An Area of High Growth: The Indian Experience

主讲人：Madhura Swaminthan, Professor of Economics, Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute

Abstract

In recent years, the discussion on India story has concentrated on the high rate of economic growth. During the Tenth Plan period, 2002-2007, per capita income (net national product) grew at 10.7 per cent per annum at current prices and 6 per cent per annum at constant prices, as compared to 3 per cent during the Ninth Plan period (the previous five years).

The pattern of development in the coming decade of the 21st Century will be very important in determining the standard of living of India’s people, particularly the several hundred million residing in rural areas. In discussing the strategy for development, one of the central questions is the trade-off, if any, between economic growth and inequality. The pitfalls of focusing on high growth alone (or what Amartya Sen had termed unaimed opulence) have now been recognized widely, including in policy circles, and in the last few years, the discussion on development has turned towards strategies for “inclusive growth.”

However, to understand whether growth is equalizing or unequalising, one needs to start with empirical facts on the levels of inequality. It is here that research on the Indian economy is seriously lacking.

There is an impression – both within India and outside – that India is a country of relatively low income inequality. In the latest Economic Survey 2010-2011, it is stated, “according to HDR 2010, inequality in India for the period 2000-2010 in terms of the income Gini coefficient was 36.8 (on a scale of 0 to 100). India’s Gini index was more favourable than those of comparable countries like South Africa (57.8), Brazil (55), China (41.5) and even the USA (40.8) which are otherwise ranked very high in human development”.

In this paper, I shall argue that the idea of India – particularly rural India – as that of a region of relatively low inequality in incomes is a very wrong. First, I show that the picture of low inequality is based on data on consumer expenditure and not income, as in the rest of the world. Secondly, I argue that the limited large-scale data available on rural household incomes, from the surveys conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research have serious data problems. Thirdly, from a set of eight village studies, conducted between 2005 and 2007, I illustrate levels and patterns of income inequality, including intra-village social inequality. This empirical exercise suggests that we need to perhaps revise our picture of inequality in rural India.