Who will stop to learn from the poor? Does the poor have anything to teach us? The message of Nobel laureates of economics Michael Kramer, Abhijit V Banerjee, and Esther Duflo seem to point in this direction. Amartya Sen had opened us to ways of understanding how a kind of economics that we pursue produces poverty and had proposed capacity building as a way to overcome poverty and deprivation. There are others like Jeffry D Sachs who in his bestselling book, “The End of Poverty” claims that if the rich world had committed $ 195 billion in foreign aid per year between 2005 and 2025, there could be end of poverty. This elimination of poverty through aid has opponents. A chief voice that articulates this position is William Easterly who in the books, “The Elusive Quest for Growth” and “White Men’s Burden” discredits the claim that poverty can be eliminated by offering developmental aid to the poor. Dambisa Moyo has added her voice to this anti-aid chorus with her book, “Dead Aid” and argues that aid does more harm. Between these two sides, without necessarily choosing any side as their preferred position Abhijit, Esther and Michael try to learn economics from the poor to eradicate poverty. This change is significant. The commonsense view holds that it is the rich nations or the rich people, who have all the lessons to eradicate poverty. Abhijit, Esther and Michael dump this assumption and try to make space for the economic wisdom of the poor. The right-wing advocates no developmental aid policy while the left-wing tilts towards aid. There are the populists like the BJP govt in our country or Trump administration in the US who follow rightwing politics but choose to follow the economics of developmental aid to suit their politics of vote bank.
To fight poverty, we need the poor on our side. The debates about the effectiveness or failure of developmental aids do not show direct engagement with the poor. They either view the poor as merely beneficiaries or as simply trapped into their fate of poverty without believing in their potency to develop themselves. Abhijit, Esther and Michael have chosen to take the poor seriously. They found profound lessons of economics from the life of the poor that have animated their randomly controlled experimental programmes. The poor have found their ways of living meaningfully with their poverty. These ways have evolved over their struggles, sweat, and tears. Abhijit, Esther and Michael seem to find inspiration from the poor to work in their poverty elimination labs. The poor try to overcome poverty. This is an important credit they give to the poor. They try random ways that are slow but directed towards a better life. This means Michael, Esther and Abhijit wish to join the poor in their battle against poverty. Alongside this partnership with the poor, they also bring in their expertise and place it at the service of eradication of poverty. They draw inspiration from 20th-century medicine where we can see that random trials were used to discover and zero on which medicines work well to cure disease. These random but controlled trials have benefited humanity. We have cure for several diseases. Thus, they brought random micro-scale controlled experiments to help find ways of dealing with specific inhibitors that affect poverty-stricken people. Those afflicted by certain diseases require a specific drug or medicine. Their approach gives us no quick fix approach and tries to scientifically evolve ways of diagnosing and treating poverty.
This means Esther and Abhijit treat poverty as a complex set of diseases that afflict various people differently and try to find a customised solution. This new approach is out of the box and is worthy of the Nobel Prize. Most economists, development theorists, and Governments have trapped top-down economics and developmental approach. Poor are viewed as objects and not necessarily subjects to be lifted out of poverty. This approach is racial and is rightly described as the white men’s burden by some economists. We in India are trapped into this mainline view of economics. Against this approach, the new experimental economics practiced by Michael, Abhijit, and Esther is indeed novel. While taking pride in the achievement of a fellow Indian, we have the challenge to do away with our oversimplification of economics in India. Maybe their randomised controlled experimental approach can open new ways of fighting poverty in partnership with our people. To achieve this goal, we have to stay away from an oversimplification of the notion of poverty. Poverty is complex like all diseases that afflict humans. We do not have one medicine for all sicknesses. So we do not have a silver bullet to eradicate poverty. All promises made by elevating one person to a superhuman level is an experiment that is paying rich dividends in politics. One man cannot fight complex poverty that afflicts our country. The sooner we get over this myth, the better it is. What we need is perhaps the multi-pronged experimental approach that diagnoses how poverty afflicts different people in our country differently. We may study different sections of people. We may have to think like Marx and trace how religions help in coping with poverty and thus, learning from the poor like Michael, Esther and Abhijit, we may be enabled to partner our poor brethren in their daily war on types of poverties. Experimental economics promises lasting solutions towards the eradication of poverty. Will the economists, developmental theorists and the Governments in our country embrace it? It does not look likely for the time being, although there is news that the AAP govt in Delhi has given an assignment to Abhijit to study the effectiveness of its schemes.
(The author is Professor of Rachol Seminary)
