Developmental State and Millennium Development Goals

Country Experiences

Kartik Roy, Sandip Kar

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9789813235298
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

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Prior to the 2016 Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations (UN) had eight "global goals" set out to all 191 UN member states at that time, and at least 22 international organizations. Seven out of the eight United National Millennium Development Goals are social goals. The attainment of such goals would require a substantial proportion of public sector expenditure. Without a robust rate of economic growth, whatever is achieved cannot be sustainable. Developmental State and Millennium Development Goals argues that this is the main reason why some of the largest developing countries fell short in achieving the goals.

--> Contents:

• Realising Millennium Development Goals: A Case of Making the State Look Globally Powerful (Kartik Roy)
• The Interventionist State in the Attainment of Developmental Goals (Kartik Roy and Yogesh Vansiya)
• From Quasi-educated Unskilled Labour to Skill Endowed Human Capital: A Firm Level Experience in India (Sandip Kar)
• Eradication of Extreme Poverty: A Regional Experience in Provincial India (Hemali Desai)
• Gender-based Inequality in India: An Inter-state Analysis (Sarita Agrawal)
• Trade Governance in Emerging States Under Global Trade Partnership (Kartik Roy)
• Trade for Economic Development in Sub-Saharan (Eastern) Africa: A Critical Commentary (Katarzyna Ann Nawrot)
• Improving Competitiveness and Economic Development Through FDI (Ivana Domazet)
• Tourism in the Realisation of India's Developmental Goals (Gaurang Dattubhai Rami)
• From Stockholm Declaration to Millennium Development Goals: The United Nation's Journey to Environmental Sustainability (Choy Yee Keong)
• Between Development and Sustainability: Adaptation Strategies for China and Indonesia (James Ferguson and Rosita Dellios)
• Geopolitics of Development: Opportunities for China and India (Rosita Dellios and James Ferguson)
• Shadow Economy and Corruption: India, China and Brazil (Kartik Roy)
• Effort to Realise Developmental Goals: Lessons Learnt (Kartik Roy)

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--> Readership: Advance undergraduates taking developmental economics modules and researchers considering the sustainability of the SGDs and MDGs. -->
Keywords:MDG;SDG;Millenium Developmental Goals;Sustainable Development Goals;United Nations;UN;Developmental EconomicsReview:0

CHAPTER 1

REALISING MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS: A CASE OF MAKING THE STATE LOOK GLOBALLY POWERFUL

Kartik Roy

Part I: Theoretical Background

Before we begin our discussions on the relevance of maintaining the global perception of economic, political and military power of the state being the facilitator of the state’s ability to attain millennium development (MD) goals, we make some comments on what the developmental state stands for and what those requirements are for a state to be accepted as a developmental state, because it is the developmental state which can mostly attain those MD goals.

The term “Developmental State” also known as “Hard State” tends to refer to the politically powerful state which guided macro and microeconomic planning for economic development in East Asia particularly in Taiwan and Korea since 1954–1955. In this model of state-developed capitalism, the state appears to assume more independent autonomous political power as well as more control over the economy. Here, the term “autonomous political power” relates to the political power of autocratic states in which the certificate of legitimacy to govern is issued by the citizenry on the basis of the extent to which their leader and his other team members have been able to enhance the wealth and prosperity of citizenry, not on the basis of muscle power of thugs affiliated to the leader and the leading political party of the governance regime as has been found to be the case in Bengal and possibly in a few other provinces of democratically governed India.

In making a decision on the issue of what kind of a developmental state model even democratically governed countries should choose, we need to find the answer in the essential traits of Evans’s (1992, 1995) and Max Weber’s (1978) state model which is based on the Taiwanese and Korean developmental state models which extend the role of the state beyond the limit prescribed by the neo-classical state model in that the presence of virtuous relationship between the state overlord, bureaucracy and the market (private sector), the corruption-free selection and presence of highly efficient bureaucrats in the administration, of freedom of bureaucrats to bring the market represented by heads of private sector corporations to the table on deliberations of economic development issues are only to be found in these genuinely developmental state models.

This type of developmental state structure cannot be found in excessively democratic governance regimes in India in particular as well as in not so democratic governance regimes in Brazil and Indonesia. The bureaucracy and the leader of the state in these democratically governed countries do not and cannot possess the same quality of MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) as in Japan, because limitless number of political parties are involved in the governance of democratic India where the official number of political parties stands at over 1,200 and where the role of such political parties is to corrupt the bureaucracy. Consequently, even if the leader of the country is visionary and desires to take bold action, his actions cannot be put into practice because the spiderweb-like bureaucratic structure will engulf the leader whose independence will be lost. Accordingly, such a leader is likely to be incapable of taking action to attain MD goals.

The United Nations (UN) laid out seven major human development and economic cooperation goals for developing countries including those emerging as well as highly populous countries to reach during a 15-year period from 2000 to 2015.

Now it is time for economists and other social scientists to examine the progress made by those emerging countries in their efforts to realise those seven MD goals.

One can expect that countries with activist governance, altruistic heads as well with virtuous policy-implementation regime will achieve far better results than those with passive governance and egocentric heads in their efforts to realise the MD goals of (i) the eradication of extreme poverty, (ii) the achievement of universal primary education, (iii) the promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women, (iv) the reduction in child mortality, (v) the improvement in maternal health, (vi) promotion of environmental sustainability and finally of (vii) the establishment of the mechanism for the global partnership in development to become a reality (World Bank 2015).

Within each of these goals, there are a number of subordinate goals (World Bank 2015), among which several are stated as follows:

Under the broader goal of the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, specific mention has been made of the need to achieve a 50 percent reduction between 1990 and 2015 in the proportion of people living below the international poverty line of US$1.00 per day. Also, a similar reduction in the proportion of people suffering from hunger has been envisaged for each country during the same 1990 and 2015 period.

Similarly, under the broader goal of achievement of universal primary education for children in each country between 2000 and 2015, specific mention has been made of the need for each government to ensure that each boy and girl in the country completes a full course of primary schooling.

Under the broad category of promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women, specific mention has been made of the need for the elimination of gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2015.

In a similar vein, specific mention has been made of the need for a 66 percent reduction in under-five mortality rates by 2015 in each country. Specific mention has also been made of the need for a 66 percent reduction in maternal mortality ratio in each country between 1990 and 2015. Under the broad category of attainment of environmental sustainability, the reversal of the loss of environmental resources, the reduction in the loss of biodiversity and a 50 percent reduction in the proportion of people without safe drinking water and without sanitation have been required to be achieved by 2015. Under the broad category of the promotion of global partnership for development, the promotion and development of an open, rule-based and predictable non-discriminatory trading and financial system has been recommended for all countries by 2015.

We have chosen for discussion several prominent issues such as the GDP, the size of the population, the size of surface area and the size of the population density in each of the following nine countries: China, Japan, India, Brazil, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Difficulties in the Attainment of MD Goals

While no country in the world has been able to attain all these seven goals, the gaps between the ex ante expectations and ex post realisation of these goals have consistently been wider in developing countries than in developed countries.

Within the broader gamut of developing countries, the performance in the attainment of MD goals of those countries which are under democratic governance, has been poorer than those which are under autocratic or semi-autocratic governance. Again among all those which are under democratic governance, the performance of those countries which are characterised by multi-party-led federal and provincial governments is poorer than the performance of other countries where there is only one democratically elected government, one election and where only a very limited number of political parties take part in election.

The only country which is ruled by multi-political party-led multi-provincial governance regimes and is characterised by innumerable elections each year is India, where monumental governance failure at the provincial level has pushed down India’s score in each of the seven MD goals, to a level well below anyone’s expectation.

Why MD Goals Cannot be Fully Implemented?

The UN: A Feeble Entity

Emphasis on Social Development

The UN does not possess political and economic power to force member countries to ensure the corruption-free implementation of programmes to make robust progress in the attainment of MD goals.

The UN itself spends billions of US dollars which it receives from member countries on such frivolous activities such as actions to transform to a cult figure — a Pakistani girl named Malala, whose foundation is now worth multi-million US dollars and who comes from Pakistan’s most restive region where hundreds of school girls like Malala get killed but draw no sympathy from these international organisations.

Furthermore, embedded nepotism has enabled small developing countries in South Asia which uses the “poverty card” to draw millions of US dollars in the form of donations and gifts and may have been able to be over-represented in the UN, although the financial contribution of these countries to the UN is extremely low.

In this situation, large numbers of educated people who have been born in those particular small South Asian countries and who have been employed in all UN organisations have continued to extract from these organisations undue benefits for their country of birth, which indeed was an integral part of a giant country of a sub-continental size. The UN thus can no longer be considered to be an impartial organisation.

No Clear Emphasis on Economic Goals

Those UN organisations which finance social development programmes in many of these countries which have allowed their current and former citizens to enter formally and informally these organisations to derive significant economic benefits for their countries while these countries with larger populations with high and low per capita income continue to contribute a substantial proportion of their national income to the UN to keep it alive, do tend to be under-represented and receive extremely low level of financial support to projects which can produce favourable economic externality.

On the basis of this argument one can say that, if the US decides to cut down its annual contribution to the UN by 50 percent that can be accepted as a justifiable course of action.

If the US does undertake such a course of action, then other countries, such as India, will follow suit. The UN will not be able to function properly without such financial support from the US and its allies.

Hence, it was necessary for the UN to place a strong emphasis on the attainment of a certain minimum rate of economic growth for each country.

Financial Globalisation and the Demise of Human Values

Under the financial globalisation, a large increase in the flow of portfolio capital to large developing countries has increased significantly the borrowing capacity of commercial banks in these countries thereby raising consequently the lust for borrowed money of these leaders of governments of unitary states and of multiple leaders of provincial governments of federal states, only to be spent on social sector projects designed primarily to promote the transformation of the leader to a cult figure, without realising that the money borrowed will have to be paid by the government with interest and that only by spending that money on economic projects, the required amount for amortisation payment can be secured. For example, in the 2016 provincial budget of Bengal, the government directed the overwhelming proportion of total budget to social sector projects on women, social entertainment and uncalled-for subsidies to encourage the millions unemployed in the urban and rural sectors to stay happy with the money that the leader directs to them. Almost total disdain of the raptorial provincial leader for investment in economic projects and industrialisation has destroyed Bengal’s economy, but has enabled all categories of people with links to the leader’s political party to extract rent money from honest citizens to grant the permission to these citizens to allow them to undertake their legitimate formal economic transaction.

With so much money in pockets of political party-linked citizens, these members of mafia groups encouraged the promotion of culture of stealing, bribery, adoption of falsehood, wanton killing of human beings, disappearance of formal rule of law, the near total disappearance of human values and of the transformation of the leader of the political party in power to a ruthless and rapacious dictator.

This culture of violence, which was created in Bengal during the rule of rapacious communists since 1977–1978 gained strength again in 2011 during the regime of the current leader of Bengal. Consequently in Bengal, Bihar and in several other Eastern Indian provinces, these MD goals have been realised only very marginally. Since India exists only in provinces, the overall results for India have been extremely poor. Similar results can also be found in Indonesia and Brazil both of which are democratically governed as India.

In Table 1.1, we present the following important features of nine countries:

(i)Surface area;

(ii)Population density;

(iii)Gross Domestic Product (GDP);

(iv)Per capita GDP;

(v)Gap in primary completion rate;

(vi)Gap in under-five morality rate;

(vii)Gap in access to improved water source;

(viii)The gap in the reversal of deforestation.

Analysis of Table

It can be seen from Table 1.1 that in surface area, China with 9,563 square km and Brazil with 8,515.8 square km of land appear to be the two of the holders of three largest territories among the 10 countries. But the present size of India’s surface area is far shorter than the original size of India’s territory which extended from the border of Afghanistan to the Burmese land, which endowed the country with the title of the Majestic Indian sub-continent. The current size of India accounts for 34.4 percent and 38.6 percent of the territories of China and Brazil. But India was under British rule for nearly 200 years. Hence, in keeping with British tradition of divide and rule, the British Raj, in collaboration with sycophant Indian leaders headed by Nehru cut up India into three pieces and created two and later three countries, split up Burma from India before the rapacious Raj left the truncated India. China and Brazil were not under British rule. Hence, the territorial integrity of these countries has been preserved.

In Row 2, we can see that in 2013, the population density at 7,713 person per square km for Singapore appears to be the highest of such population densities in other nine countries. The countries with the second and third highest population densities (516.0, 421.0) in 2013 appear to be Korea and India. But in per capita income growth, the score of China and India at 7.1 percent and 5.6 percent in 2013 appear to be higher than those of the other countries.

Table 1.1: Differences between the Ex ante Expectations and Ex post Attainment of MD Goals

Notes: “a” refers to the gap in primary completion rate which is measured by the gross intake ratio to the last grade of primary education. The m...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Accreditation
• Contents
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Chapter 1 Realising Millennium Development Goals: A Case of Making the State Look Globally Powerful
• Chapter 2 The Interventionist State in the Attainment of Developmental Goals
• Chapter 3 From Quasi-educated Unskilled Labour to Skill Endowed Human Capital: A Firm Level Experience in India
• Chapter 4 Eradication of Extreme Poverty: A Regional Experience in Provincial India
• Chapter 5 Gender-based Inequality in India: An Inter-state Analysis
• Chapter 6 Trade Governance in Emerging States Under Global Trade Partnership
• Chapter 7 Trade for Economic Development in Sub-Saharan (Eastern) Africa: A Critical Commentary
• Chapter 8 Improving Competitiveness and Economic Development Through FDI
• Chapter 9 Tourism in the Realisation of India’s Developmental Goals
• Chapter 10 From Stockholm Declaration to Millennium Development Goals: The United Nation’s Journey to Environmental Sustainability
• Chapter 11 Between Development and Sustainability: Adaptation Strategies for China and Indonesia
• Chapter 12 Geopolitics of Development: Opportunities for China and India
• Chapter 13 Shadow Economy and Corruption: India, China and Brazil
• Chapter 14 Effort to Realise Developmental Goals: Lesson Learnt
• Index