A boy struggles to complete high school and he is the first person in his village to do so. A year later, when he cannot find employment, he ends up digging for sand on a dry riverbed. A dairy farmer breaks her hip while milking a cow, and is forced to sell her silver anklets to pay for substandard but expensive medical care. These are some of the heartbreaking, harrowing stories of India’s one billion plus that we encounter in Anirudh Krishna’s book.
Our age is marked by two grand narratives: globalization and democratization— which are not readily compatible. While the move toward democracy requires a certain civic equality among all participants, globalization in its present form accentuates social inequality. The Broken Ladder addresses the core issues of our democratic polity to underscore its faultlines. Our country represents a paradox, juxtaposing an impressive growth record and some of the trendiest investment opportunities with a large number of poor and undernourished people cut off from these opportunities that accrue from globalization. Elites in India can only see how their futures might be more closely linked with a larger global project, and less intimately linked with vast segments of their own country, the poor and the disempowered. The rising inequality emanating from decisions based on such an attitude has costs that keep accumulating. An important source of difference that persists between India and the advanced economies of the West is that a greater share of the Indian population lives in rural areas. The hinterland is frequently seen as a drag on India’s progress, preventing the achievement of faster modernization.
There is enough evidence of growing spatial inequalities, and a widening rift between cities and villages. One part of the explanation has to do with what economists refer to as ‘agglomeration effects’. Another part has to do with attitudinal shifts and policy orientation. Market-driven agglomeration effects explain why financiers, suppliers of intermediate goods and maintenance services, and a mass of workers with diverse skills are commonly attracted to locations with superior infrastructural facilities and growing economic opportunities, namely, big cities. Specialized colleges, libraries and bookshops, shopping malls crop up in the clusters of big cities that are inhabited by highly skilled professionals and their families. As this dynamic gathers pace, the separation between the groups widens.