By IANS
Chennai : Replicating the ‘model village’ concept and the agricultural module followed in India can help African nations transform their economies over mid-term, according to noted economist Jeffrey D. Sachs.
He was delivering the Millennium Lecture, “Lessons from India for Africa’s Economic Development”, on the 17th anniversary of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation here.
He has pioneered the ‘millennium village’ in 20 African countries, built on the Indian concept and turned famine-struck countries like Malawi into food grain exporting countries in three years.
“Food production in Africa can triple in a few years, and there could be 90 percent reduction in child mortality – the technology package is there,” Sachs said.
Sachs called for “targeted investments in Africa, smart subsidies and prioritising public finance”, which is the “basic lesson from India” Africa could learn to bridge the economic gap within five-six years.
Pointing out that the West and, consequently, Africa had not believed in listening to “the voices from Asia” in the 1980s, he recalled that renowned Indian scientist Swaminathan had in 1985 advocated the concept of the model village and “Africa has now fallen back 40 years in its economic development”.
Blaming international funding institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund for misguiding donors like the US and Britain in the 1980s, Sachs said Africa had lost out because of the “upside down policy” that denied subsidy to the poorest of the poor.
“I don’t like markets in a fundamentalist sense,” said the director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “When people are hungry and dying, you cannot ask them to restructure debts, leave the economy to the markets and systems clogged up by ideology.
“Public institutional financing remains imperative in developing nations of Africa,” Sachs said.
“Pentagon spends $623 billion on purposeless security measures. Less than one day of Pentagon’s spending would provide bed-nets and prevent malaria for every sleeping site in Africa for five years.”
African nations’ constraints were high fertility and population doubling every 25 years, soil that is water and nutrient hungry, complete lack of irrigation and farming technology, high disease prevalence, high infant mortality, lack of basic education, lack of infrastructure like electricity, roads, railways, the economist pointed out.
Comparing the scene with India, he said: “India has the technology package and the delivery module like (an) extensive rail network.
“Once the technology for high-yield hybrid seeds was developed, the Indian government gave full-fledged support and subsidised technology, fertiliser, water and extended irrigation, which brought about the green revolution.”
From a state of famine conditions in the 1960s, India went on to become a food surplus state.
“However, India’s revolution is still incomplete. Its infant and maternal mortality rates are high and its investment in public healthcare was for a long time less than one percent of its GNP.”
“But the National Health Mission is a transformative idea, and I would want that the public spending on healthcare is raised to even 5 percent of the GNP ($40 per person),” Sachs said.
India too needs another agricultural revolution, he added.