Econ Textbook?

Chapter 5: Property and Power section 5.13

The textbook gives an example with West Bengal in which the distribution of the crop used to be distributed 50% for the farmers who worked on the land of the landowners and the other 50% for the landowners, a system that had been in place since the 18th century (basically feudalism).

The problem was that the peasants lived in miserable conditions, understandable, so what the government did was pass a law where the farmers got 75% of the crop and could not get evicted by the landowners, Operation Barga, the textbook claims that this was the reason total output shot up 28% in the region which is something I am not going to dispute. The textbook claims this was a great achievement and increased the amount of output the farmers received as well as income, even the World Bank endorsed this policy for economic development. 

Now you may be asking, why are you mad? do you hate poor people? and the answer, to the latter is no and to the former is that I am ducking mad because what this policy is doing is effectively MAINTAINING FEUDALISM IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES, THE WORLD BANK ISN'T SUPPORTING THIS POLICY OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF THEIR HEART THEY ARE EFFECTIVELY SUPPORTING A POLICY THAT WILL MAINTAIN WEST BENGAL AS A THIRD WORLD FEUAL COUNTRY NEVER BEING ABLE TO DEVELOP .

I have made a pretty bold claim and now I have to justify it.

Okay.

Lets think.

Why do countries develop?

Because the population pursues more productive activities.

By pursuing more productive activities a larger portion of the population can engage in other activities which provides more productivity and the cycle continues. 

How did Western countries develop?

Well we also had feudalism.

But once industry started to emerge in the cities what happened?

WHAT FARMERS COULD EARN IN THE CITY WAS MORE THAN WHAT THEY COULD EARN AS FARMERS.

So what did the farmers do? they went to the city to work as factory workers.

And what happened? Living standards increased because now landlords had to offer more wages to farmers since there was less supply of labor which also means that investing in better technology such as tractors made economic sense. Living standards also increased because the population was pursuing wealth creating activities in the factories, and yes the conditions were terrible but it is the reason we are in the situation we are today. With the hindsight of experience other countries were able to replicate what happened in the west but instead of over 200 years in less than fifty, examples being: Taiwan, Japan, South Korea (countries that ignored the World Bank by the way)

(Just so everyone knows. Slavery wasn't outlawed out of the goodness of people's hearts, slavery was outlawed because it was cheaper to pay a farmer a wage than owning a slave. )

So.

What does this have to do with West Bengal.

Well...

If farmers make more income on the farm than in a factory what is the farmer going to do?

Yes that is right, he is not going to go the factory.

And what is going to happen.

West Bengal is going to keep on being a $H1T H01E. BECAUSE THE COUNTRY ISN'T GOING TO PURSUE MORE PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES. 

The West developed because peasants made more money in factories, West Bengal isn't going to develop because peasants aren't going to work in factories because they make more money in farms. 

Good job World Bank, my applauses for your ingenious methods of maintaining third world countries as third world countries. 

clap, clap, clap...

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