Wealth doesn’t make one happy, say seers. The wealthy would nod their heads in agreement, giving out philosophical sighs. Ask them to give away their wealth and be happy, and they would give out malanthropic groans.
The problem is not with the wealthy; it’s with the seers—they mouth these sort of inanities as quotable quotes to dissuade us from coveting the wealth of the wealthy. That way, they get feasted by the wealthy and feted by us.
Does wealth make you rich? Most people would say yes, saying ‘wealthy’ and ‘rich’ are synonymous. I doubt. What if one possesses wealth but can’t use it to live well? Being wealthy is to possess wealth; being rich is to have enough dough to spend on the good things of life. Both aren’t the same.
Economic geographers point to many lands like that—wealthy but not rich. The Spectator wrote in 1711, that “it is generally observed, that in countries of the greatest plenty there is the poorest living”. That was six decades before Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, marking the birth of economics as a science—dismal as Thomas Carlyle called it, or otherwise.
In 1993, Richard Auty described how several mineral-rich countries remained poorer than mineral-poor countries. He called it ‘resource curse’. In 1995, Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner found a correlation between resource abundance and poor economic growth. Since 2000, Indian economists have been watching the curse working on Jharkhand.
Jharkhandis had thought they were poor because the Biharis and outsiders, whom they call dikus, were carting away their wealth, a feeling they had right from the days when the Santhalis revolted against the British and the dikus. The distrust of the dikus continued; it manifested as a movement for a state separate from Bihar. In 2000, A.B. Vajpayee created Jharkhand from Bihar, along with Uttarakhand (from UP) and Chhattisgarh (from MP).
Everyone thought Jharkhand would now race ahead of the rest of India. Why? Because it is the wealthiest state. Under its tableland are buried nearly half of India’s known mineral deposits. The state is the sole producer of cooking coal, uranium and pyrite, is the largest producer of coal, mica, kyanite and copper, and is a leading supplier of most other minerals. Geologists say, there could even be gold, silver, and stones buried deep.
Yet, NITI Ayog rates Jharkhand as the second poorest state. Close to half its people (42 per cent) are poor, still more ill-fed, a third can’t read or write.
Economists blame it on unstable politics. Even the first assembly, the one which the state was born with, threw up two chief ministers. The first election in 2005 yielded majority to none. Shibu Soren, who had spearheaded the Jharkhand movement, quit in 10 days of taking office, yielding place to Arjun Munda’s BJP-led coalition. In a year Munda gave way to Madhu Koda, Koda to Soren, and Soren to president’s rule. The rigmarole repeated after every election save the one in 2014 which yielded the only government in a quarter century that ran full term under Raghubar Das. In 24 years Jharkhand had 13 governments led by seven CMs, three of whom went to jail.
The last elections in 2019 gave 30 seats to JMM, whose Hemant Soren allied with the Congress to form a government. It looked stable, but last January the Enforcement Directorate arrested Hemant amid allegations of land scams. Champai Soren sat in till Hemant returned in June. Champai is now with the BJP.
Jharkhand is set to elect its 14th government. Will it be stable, and make wealthy Jharkhand rich?
prasannan@theweek.in