Detecting Starvation in Participatory Democracies

Amartya Sen has famously claimed that famines do not occur in democracies[i], but it is not immediately clear why this should be so. After all, inequality, deprivation, economic exploitation and denial of access to basic human needs are endemic in democracies around the world, even the United States. Do the processes of legislative accountability, a free press, free movement within the country, the rule of law, social security provisions and the political freedoms associated with a democracy guarantee that we will never see a repeat of likes of the Bengal Famine of 1943? In this paper I propose a bottom-up process that detects which citizens are unable to obtain basic human needs, through the participation of the people in the local political structures. The process design addresses the issues involved in the definition of deprivation, provides rapid identification of deprived citizens, and aggregation and reporting upwards into district/county, state and federal administration to ensure that immediate local responses are back-filled with resources that sustain them for the long run. Thus it can deal not only with nutritional deprivation, but also other human needs. The model will use India as an example.
Most countries, whether democratic or not, have disaster response mechanisms that kick-in when there are major events such as flood, earthquake, hurricane or terrorism. Pre-warning periods are generally short, ranging from days in the cases of weather related events, to none at all for earthquakes. There is usually no debate about the fact that the event has occurred, or that help is needed; only the extent of the damage and the ways in which to help the affected populace need to be determined and acted upon. Generally, in regions prone to these events, or where there is a likelihood of their occurrence, plans are already in place for rapid execution. International assistance is usually prompt, as in the Tsunami of 2004, even though some governments may refuse aid, as did Myanmar recently. The quality of the immediate response and the follow-up action are usually subject to intense media scrutiny as these are the events that form the basic raw material for the twenty-four hour news channels.

Starvation, epidemics and other more subtle deprivations of basic human needs are very different from the sudden intense disaster. There are usually chronic conditions such as lack of economic or natural resources, political or military conflicts, or the aftermath of exploitation that set the stage for an acute phase. As these have usually been in place for some years, they are no longer in the news, and no one is held specifically accountable for their removal. Berg claims that in the large parts of the developing world “malnutrition is everybody’s business but nobody’s responsibility” (Banik 2007:5).

These usually start in poorer or remote localities that are not covered by the media, leading to a delay in detection. Whether or not they are occurring is open to political debate since they are usually an intensification of a deprivation that is chronic; they are usually slow to build up over weeks and months; the causes are not easily understood and the steps needed to be taken to help those affected are not only controversial, but some could actually hurt the affected people in the long run.

The first step is setting up a system of measures and thresholds that provide a detection mechanism. In the examples that follow, I will use administrative terms, types of work performed and commodities from India, explaining them in terms of equivalent US terms in the footnotes. Setting up a monitoring system on a national or even district level would be impossible as agreement on the measures and their thresholds could not be reached. However this can be accomplished at the local level: in the village (Gram) or urban neighbourhood (ward or area in terms of the Panchayati Raj legislation). While guidelines could be provided on suggested measures and thresholds, the ultimate decision needs to be local. It also needs to be revalidated periodically.

A Deprivation Detection Model

This model detects conditions of deprivation at the local level by setting up lists of commodities produced and consumed with the corresponding quantities and prices, and recording daily family income for different types of work or economic strata. An exchange entitlement mapping uses allocation percentages and the production and consumption prices to identify the groups that don’t earn enough to purchase the minimum quantity of commodities needed to maintain a healthy nourished life. This is to be constructed and maintained at the local level, by the Gram Panchayat or Ward Committee. The examples of commodities, types of work performed and income allocations are given for illustrative purposes; it is expected that the exact details would be formulated by each local body, based on their circumstances.

Sen has detailed the difficulties in detecting and aggregating measures of poverty and deprivation within and across countries and communities: the “head-count measure… has at least two drawbacks… it takes no account of the extent of the (income) shortfall (from the poverty line, and) it is insensitive to the distribution of income among the poor” (Sen 1981:10). He goes onto criticize the biological approach to the definition of poverty in terms of nutritional requirements as their translation into commodity requirements depends on the food habits of a diverse population. The simplistic views of Karl Marx that “in a given country, at a given period, the average quantity of the means of subsistence necessary for the labourer is practically known” (Sen 1981:18 quoting Marx in Das Kapital), do not map to a complex reality. As Megill has pointed out, Marx’s rejection of the market was partly due to his positivist belief that the people’s commodity needs could be computed and planned for; he rejected the multiplicity of goods that even the simplest human society needs and produces. Therefore large-scale aggregate measures that detect and report poverty are not practical: we need a localized approach.

In order to realistically model basic human needs Sen suggests that a hybrid vector of commodity requirements be used, e.g. “amounts of calories, proteins, housing, schools, hospital beds” (Sen 1981:25). In order to make this amenable to easy measurement, local knowledge has to be used to translate every element into a commodity vector that lists the commodities essential for a family to remain nourished and healthy. Note that these commodities are to be measured in terms of direct consumption in their natural units, and not in terms of the cash needed to acquire them. In addition, the current prices per unit need to be recorded on a regular basis. Table 1 is an example of a Consumption Commodity Vector, with prices in Indian Rupees and sample quantities for a family of four. In addition, a Production Commodity Vector similar to the Consumption Commodity Vector needs to be created that shows the commodities produced and their prices in the local area.

Consumption Commodity Vector



For the consumption commodities that are not self-produced, an Exchange Entitlement Mapping has to be performed for every significant socio-economic segment in the local population, focusing primarily on those at-risk. This involves estimates of their daily income, and their likely allocation of that income to the types of commodities. This must include allowance for non-essential purchases since this is not a model for a concentration camp. Local knowledge of market and labour conditions, behaviour patterns and economic stratification is needed to carry out this breakdown, but should be feasible at the village level. Table 2 is an example of the Income Vector, with examples of the daily income earned by a standard family in different lines of work.

Income Vector

The quality weightage adjusts for the fact that persons in the higher stratification need to preserve a higher standard of life even if it is a façade. Srivastava points out that during famines in the late nineteenth century, the higher castes and classes had a false sense of respectability, and could not participate in relief works or go to the poor houses (Srivastava 1968:335-336), and therefore suffered more during famines and periods of shortage.

Income Allocation

Table 3 is an example of the allocation of the expenses to the major areas of spending by the different types of workers. It takes into account that persons belonging to different economic strata have different expenditure priorities.

These four tables are then used to create a dashboard where we compute the margin between the income allocated for a type of need and the current cost on a daily basis. If the margin is less than Rs. 5, the cell is in yellow; it is shown in red when negative. In the example below, the Kisan is unable to afford food and shelter at the current income level of Rs. 75 per day and the local authorities should either invoke National Rural Employment Guarantee Yojana, a social security scheme of the central government that guarantees 100 working days in a year for every rural laborer and pays Rs. 100 per day or provide subsidized food and shelter. Note also that the higher strata are equally affected by the food prices and need support of some sort, or are forced to re-allocate their expenditure.

Dashboard

This dashboard could be easily implemented using a spreadsheet for local purposes, but using a web-based application with distributed daily data collection from various local functionaries and online display of the results is a better approach. By putting this on the Panchayat website, it becomes easily accessible to the public. Subsidiary information about data entry times and sources as well as drill-down into the calculations would be added functionality.
Elected village committees (Gram Panchayats) reporting into district level organizations (Zilla Parishads) are already involved in decentralized planning using software tools and portals developed by the National Informatics Center. Implementation of the proposed solution could easily be achieved on this platform (Planning Commission website).

Reporting Up the Chain

As Sen points out, “there is very little alternative to accepting the element of arbitrariness in the description of poverty, and making that element as clear as possible” (Sen 1981:22). By setting the measures and thresholds in a participatory process at a local level, it is the people most affected by this arbitrariness who make the decisions. The aggregation across the district or higher level administrative constructs needs to use the local metrics as their basis, not the measures themselves. Instead of averaging the commodity vector over a larger geographical unit, it is the number of reds and yellows in the metrics that should be aggregated. This way the disadvantaged tribal community that is facing starvation and is showing a red in its nutrition metric is not drowned out by the nearby district headquarters which has enough food to eat. Superimposing the dashboard on zoom-able maps with red/yellow/green dots to show the aggregates would be the best format.

At the state and national levels, these aggregated local level metrics need to be compared with other measurements of the economy, sample surveys, administrative reports etc and divergences between the reporting sources investigated. These can lead to fine-tuning of the traditional aggregated measurements as well as guidelines for use at the local level. This is needed to avoid moral hazards in the mis-application of central aid, as it is in the interest of the local political structures to exaggerate the magnitude of the problem being faced so as to show their constituents how much they are doing for them. Level-setting exercises that compare the basic data and the thresholds with independent sources and gaining consensus from all the agencies involved will reduce this risk.

In addition, steps need to be taken to ensure that there is no deprivation of political rivals by leaving them out of the monitoring, or the relief measures. As Banik has pointed out repeatedly, starvation and its relief is highly politicized; any process that is designed must counteract the basic tendency to ensure that political capital results from any relief undertaken. This can also be guaranteed by openness in the computation and display of the monitors, especially by making them available for review on the web by the public without logins or restrictions.

Conclusion

This paper describes an approach to the prevention of starvation and improvement in nutrition based on local participatory democracy and the use of information and communication technology (ICT). If applied to India as an example, it would require the setup and maintenance of commodity consumption and production and income vectors, daily data entry of sample data points for prices and incomes, and regular monitoring of the reports on local, district and state levels. The Panchayati Raj model that has been created in the country has already created the basic infrastructure needed for this exercise.

The political will and the administrative ability to perform this activity have already been demonstrated in Purulia, West Bengal. In order to effectively fight starvation in at-risk populations, Banik mentions at least three processes that mirror the proposals in this paper, albeit without the formalized approach and use if ICT. First, the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] party workers monitor food and water availability, as well as distressed families and arrange for them to be registered to receive relief. Second, the elected panchayat representatives monitor their communities and reach out through the Zilla Parishad to the district administration to ensure that relief is provided to those who need it. Third, three-member block level committees that include representatives from the Gram Panchayat, the administration and a social worker, monitor the transport and distribution of subsidized food from the Public Distribution System. Banik credits the innovations in Purulia to alert Panchayat representatives who “appeared more capable of identifying potentially vulnerable individuals and households… since they feared loss of political support if they ignored the plight of people close to destitution”. However, over-politicization of aid can be counter-productive as “Panchayat representatives regularly added and deleted households from BPL (Below the Poverty Line) depending on political affiliation” (Banik 2007:170). The setup phase when the vectors and thresholds are created on a local basis help reduce this arbitrariness compared to an aggregated poverty line threshold for income.

Why do democracies do better when fighting famine? I would argue that firstly they allow the information about the critical conditions in affected localities flow from the bottom-up, from the people actually affected, through administrative reporting to decision-makers. There are also other channels such as the press, intelligentsia and political workers, both from the ruling and opposition parties, and institutions such a parliament that bring the situation to public notice. Secondly, once they are out in the open, in a democracy the ruling party needs to at least show that they are taking action, or be out of office. Finally, there are the courts at the state and federal level that can investigate and intervene. None of these institutions can do the same in a closed dictatorial government.

References

Banik, Dan.(2007) Starvation and India’s Democracy. (Oxon: Routledge).
Megill, Allan. (2002) Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason (Why Marx Rejected Politics and the Market). (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield).
Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Govt. of India. (2007) The State of the Panchayats: A Mid-term Review and Appraisal. (New Delhi).
Planning Commission, Govt. of India. Manual for Integrated District Planning. http://panchayat.gov.in/data/1234765558648~Manual%20for%20Integrated%20District%20Planning%20-%20Planning%20Commission.pdf. Accessed May 24, 2009.
Sen, Amartya. (1981) Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Fulfilment. (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Srivastava, Hari Shanker. (1968) The History of Indian Famines and Development of Famine Policy [1858-1918]. (Agra: Sri Ram Mehra & Co.).
[i] Banik quotes Sen in ‘Food Battles: Conflicts in the Access to Food’, Food and Nutrition, 10:81-89