ECONOMICS

Assignment Number: 2

BOOK REVIEW
EVERYBODY LOVES A GOOD DROUGHT (1996)

SUBMITTED TO:
PROF. BISHAKHA GHOSH

SUBMITTED BY:
HARSHITHA ADARI
SECTION B, YEAR I, SEMESTER I
2021-5LLB-04
Exam Code No. 5248

NALSAR UNIVERSITY OF LAW, HYDERABAD

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................2
SUMMARY...............................................................................................................................3
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES........................................................................................................3
CRITICAL ANALYSIS.............................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................7

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 INTRODUCTION

“Everybody loves a good drought: Stories from India’s Poorest Districts” is a book that offers
an image of grim and desperate India. Palagummi Sainath, a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee is a
revered journalist who writes on issues ranging from economic inequalities and poverty to
rural deprivation. In this book, he provides an insight into the rural life of the poorest districts
of India, one that is rarely portrayed by the media.

The stories from this book are a lucid description of pain of the helpless. Though the central
concept is drought, the focus was also laid on various aspects such as health, economics,
justice, education, poverty and role of press. The book is published in 1996, the time when
our country began to reconstruct its economy with the prescriptions of economic
liberalization. The very appreciated “liberalization” process is little known for the distress
that it caused because of the budget cuts and withdrawal of agricultural subsidies. The
governments’ interest in introducing new technologies and schemes overshadowed the need
for understanding the real causes of poverty in the first place.

This book also accounts for the inefficiency of well-intentioned but ill-implemented relief
programs by the welfare departments, which in one way pushed the families of tribals and
locals into poverty which has deleterious effects that are to be endured by the following
generations as well. The series of short stories in the book are the travails of rural people
before two decades. But what is disheartening is that these stories did not change. Even
today, the state of the poor is miserable as it was before 20 years. In this review, the author
primarily focuses on explaining how the economic reforms changed the lives of rural work
force.

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 SUMMARY

Everybody loves a good drought takes us into the lives of millions of marginalized. Sainath’s
80,000 km journey in more than ten districts of seven states is documented into sixty-eight
reports which reveal the hollowness of the development strategies of the government.1

The name of the book when understood in the right way throws light on the tragic irony.
Those who are in power like disasters such as floods or droughts because that makes the
approval of sanctioned work easier. These works undertaken for the improvement of lives
ironically are one of those major causes for the class divide seeming evident between the rich
and the poor, literate and illiterate and people from cities and the far-flung villages because
the aims of these works do not concur with the aspirations of the people.

The book is classified into ten pithy chapters dealing with multitude of themes- press, poverty
and development. The first section of the book is about the ‘development’ or the lack of it in
the nation. It tells how even after half a century of independence; things are still the same or
even worse. Whereas, the second section of this book is full of narratives on the lengths that
poor has to go to get basic amenities and survive with dignity. The last part is on how the
distressed population fight back with meagre support and knowledge.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

In this review, the author wishes to explore the fallacies in the development policies and
understand how and why the techniques used to reduce poverty have ironically increased
poverty. The author also aims to examine the chapters “Lenders, Losers, Crooks & Credit” 2
and “And the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth” 3 as they put forth the cases of locals being
exploited in the name of development strategies.

These particular chapters have been chosen because they precisely talk about the
consequences of the economic reforms introduced by the state. In the end, it is also explained
why there is a need -for the press to draw lessons from the book on how to report ground
realities, for the state to empathize with people on how its policies affect when ill-
implemented and for us to realize how privileged our lives are when millions don’t even have
basic amenities.
1
P. SAINATH, EVERYBODY LOVES A GOOD DROUGHT 1-2 (1996).
2
P. SAINATH, EVERYBODY LOVES A GOOD DROUGHT 193-225 (1996).
3
P. SAINATH, EVERYBODY LOVES A GOOD DROUGHT 69-98 (1991).

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 CRITICAL ANALYSIS

“Everybody loves a good drought” is a compilation of field reports on destitution in rural

hinterland. It is a work that brought to light issues that are socially relevant and alive even
now as they were in early 1990s, when the book got published. As the author begins the book
by saying- ‘the focus here is on people and not on numbers’, his objective throughout the
book has been to show how the system thrives on the misery of the 312 million living below
the poverty line and how the poor are often reduced to statistics.

The stories from the chapter ‘Lenders, Losers, Crooks and Credit’ show us how the reforms
introduced the credit system in rural areas since the early ‘90s. The economic reforms
enabled to an open economy that is highly mobile and has freer cross border flow of goods
and services. The government ended the market intervention roles and allowed national banks
to back out from giving agricultural credits. At the same time, prices of agricultural inputs
have increased drastically due to cut down on subsidies as the government wanted to placate
financial capital by maintaining low fiscal deficit without raising taxes. The
recommendations of Khusro committee and Narasimham committee led to a fall in
investments into agri-sector and impaired farm growths. These series of new reforms left the
peasants with no other source to rely on except a new class of private moneylenders. For
large section of agricultural producers, reproduction of their economy became inconceivable.
In this way, the reforms, as Sainath claims, work in a way that they propel the villagers
towards moneylenders.4

This created various problems to the peasants such as reduced rate of growth, badly affected
income flow and it also impaired the profitability of agricultural sector. The agri-sector trade
liberalization forced the domestic producers to face the volatilities of international
competition and many of them suffered losses. While it is accepted that economic
liberalization did bring in some positive changes such as increased mechanization, better
research and development, credits by MNCs for contract farming, these effects largely
benefitted large farmers and rich entities and had limited positive effects on poor and middle
class. The evolving middle class has also benefitted, the relative number of people did not
increase but the relative incomes did raise. These economic burdens are not the only
problems that the farmers face, they also have to bear the brunt of industrial and
infrastructural projects which forces relocation of their families.
4
P. SAINATH, EVERYBODY LOVES A GOOD DROUGHT 227 (1996).

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When the lands of farmers are taken by the state for the sake of developmental projects,
consent of everyone who own those lands is not taken. Most of the times, the distressed
accept to give away their lands in return for jobs in towns or cities. But all is not sorted out
even after migrating to cities. And this aspect is aptly discussed by the author of the book in
the chapter “And the meek shall inherit the Earth”.

It is gut-wrenching to know that roughly one in every ten Indian tribes is a displaced person. 5
Numbers suggest that there are 15 million displaced people on the name of “development-
projects” that are uncalled for. How many of those who are displaced are safely rehabilitated?
- is a question with saddening answers. This happens because the displaced people do not
have the required support. They are evicted from their houses, moved to cities where they
have to live with their little education and earnings besides evidently growing class divide,
discrimination and social inferiorities – all with a tag of ‘beneficiaries’. People finally take up
some jobs in new places, they are deprived of the bargaining position in the market due to
proliferation of insecure employment.

So, we can infer that these economic policies and reforms brought in a process of ‘primitive
accumulation of capital’, not only in terms of flow but also in terms of stock, here flow being
income squeeze and stock being land and asset acquisitions.6 Primitive accumulation of
capital basically refers to the “separation of producer from the process of production”. 7 It
happens as the producer lose the power over his/her own produce. Karl Marx proposed this
concept in the primitive societies but the in reality, this accumulation of capital is still
prevalent. MNCs plunder on and destroy the most valuable natural resources that belong to
the natural habitat of the rural people. There are also instances when land is grabbed from the
people by the huge agricultural investors.

5
P. SAINATH, EVERBODY LOVES A GOOD DROUGHT 71-73 (1996).
6
Prabhat Patnaik, It never trickles down, THE HINDU (Jul. 26, 2016), https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-
ed/It-never-trickles-down/article14508121.ece.
7
Marx’s Concept of Primitive Accumulation, IVY PANDA (May. 7, 2020), https://ivypanda.com/essays/marxs-
concept-of-primitive-accumulation/#ivy-csf-section.

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“...rural poverty and it's miserable cousin, suburban squalor, most vividly represented by
Dalit India, are seen by the power structures of our nation as the cause of India's
backwardness, when they are, in truth, it's result"

These lines from the book sums up the whole theme. The very concepts that we use to
measure our development are also questioned in this book. GDP is known as the calculator of
the progress, but we often ignore that millions of citizens are cut off from the larger economy.
This book teaches us to understand poverty as a process rather than an event. It requires an
understanding beyond the statistics. The state has the responsibility to answer the question-
“How much does it cost to compensate the masses who suffered from the projects that they
never asked for?”

Coming to the last part where Sainath discussed why everybody loves a good drought, he
explained how the economic relief sought after calamities rarely reach the needy.8 The media
at times of such uncertainties look out for images of impoverished masses and news of rich
entities donating a meagre part of its wealth instead of reporting the ground reality as to why
and what led to these conditions. When press ignores these facts, the reality will be seldom
understood by the world. That is why problems of the voiceless remain silent and ignored.

8
P. SAINATH, EVERYBODY LOVES A GOOD DROUGHT 315-324 (1996).

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 CONCLUSION

“When poor get literate and educated, the rich lose their palanquin bearers.”

Reviewing this book has taught me more about how the economic policies work in the
reality. After reading the anecdotes of the miserable, I have not only gained a deeper
understanding and appreciation of the exemplary journalism of Sainath, but also realized how
privileged we are to not live in such conditions.

From what the author has analyzed, the problems faced by the rural population are the
repercussions of the lopsided economic development. The policies are not focused on the
holistic development. It is high time to reconsider our strategies at various levels- from
reconstructing our legal and credit frameworks at rural level to enabling ease of doing
business and recognizing rural entrepreneurs. Micro-enterprises in rural areas should receive
support from state through banks, non-banking financial intermediaries and agricultural
entities. Consulting people before introducing new schemes and projects should be
considered mandatory by the government because if projects could not cater the needs of
people, then there is no use of introducing them.

To eradicate poverty, there is a need to provide market linkage to the minor producers,
enhance the capabilities of the poor by creating social safety nets to the vulnerable and
provide good governance within the community organizations. Diversification of the
livelihoods of the poor could encourage their participation in production, value-addition and
make them contributors to the economy. Providing them with basic education and proper
health care facilities are also must to alleviate poverty. If aspirations of the people who are
suffering are given importance, suffering would be less.

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