There Can Be No Social Justice Without Economic Prosperity but Economic Prosperity Without Social Justice Is Meaningless

In December 2010 a twenty six year old Tunisian vegetable seller named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire outside a government office after officials confiscated his cart. Within weeks the protests that followed had toppled the president and spread across the Arab world. Tunisia had been praised by international institutions as an economic success, with steady growth and rising exports. But young graduates faced high unemployment, the well connected prospered, and ordinary people were humiliated by petty officials. The episode illustrates the second half of the topic, that prosperity without social justice is meaningless.

The first half is no less true. A society cannot provide schools, hospitals, pensions and fair courts if it has no money. The ideals of equality remain words on paper if there is nothing to pay the teacher or build the clinic. Poor countries that tried to redistribute their poverty have rarely succeeded, and the surest way for most societies to lift the poorest has been to grow. Since 1990 the proportion of the world's population living in extreme poverty has fallen from about a third to less than a tenth, mostly because of growth in China and India.

The theoretical foundation for the connection lies in the work of Amartya Sen, who argued in Development as Freedom in 1999 that the purpose of development is to expand the real freedoms that people enjoy, such as being able to be healthy, educated and politically active. Income is a means to these freedoms and not their measure. A country can be rich and leave much of its population unfree, as the oil states of the Gulf show in their treatment of migrant workers under the kafala system, whose employees often have their passports held by employers.

History provides cases where growth came with injustice and left a legacy of trouble. Brazil's military government presided over an economic miracle in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with annual growth rates above ten per cent, but income inequality rose, and the country entered the following decades with one of the most unequal distributions of income in the world. South Africa under apartheid had a strong economy for much of the twentieth century and an unjust society that could be held together only by force. The wealth did not prevent the system from being judged immoral, and its cost was paid later.

The wealth did not prevent the system from being judged immoral, and its cost was paid later.

There are also cases where social investment came before prosperity and helped to create it. South Korea and Taiwan carried out land reforms in the 1950s that distributed farmland to tenants, and invested in universal schooling, before their industrial take off. The broad base of educated and secure citizens became the workforce of their economic miracles. Kerala, a state of modest income in the 1970s and 1980s, achieved levels of literacy, life expectancy and infant survival similar to those of rich countries through public investment in schools and health. Economists once called this the Kerala puzzle. Later growth, driven partly by remittances from educated migrants, suggested that the social base had economic value.

Why would justice help prosperity? Educated and healthy people are more productive. Secure property rights and honest courts encourage investment. A population that feels it has a fair share is more willing to accept reforms and less likely to rebel. Research by economists such as Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson has argued that inclusive institutions, which give broad groups a stake in the system, underlie long term prosperity, whereas extractive ones that serve a narrow elite stagnate. The two goals are not enemies, and they depend on each other.

The trouble lies in the timing and the trade offs. Simon Kuznets suggested in the 1950s that inequality first rises and then falls as an economy develops, and some countries have followed the curve. But Thomas Piketty's work in 2013 argued that in recent decades returns on capital have outpaced growth, concentrating wealth. In India, an Oxfam report in 2019 estimated that the top one per cent held about forty per cent of the country's wealth. A high rate of growth coexisting with deprivation in nutrition, education and sanitation raises the question that the topic poses, of what the growth is for.

Policy choices illustrate the dilemma. A government that raises taxes on the rich to fund welfare may discourage investment, and one that cuts them to attract investment may leave the poor to fend for themselves. A subsidy that protects the vulnerable may distort markets, and a market reform that increases efficiency may displace workers. These are not easy calls, and there is no formula. The approach that has served many countries is to design public spending that builds capabilities, such as in health, schooling and skills, which are both just and productive.

India's own path reflects the debate. The Constitution placed the Directive Principles of State Policy, which urge the state to secure a just social order, beside the guarantees of fundamental rights, and the planners of the 1950s treated growth and equity as joint aims. Liberalisation after 1991 accelerated growth and reduced poverty, but also raised questions about jobs, regional disparities and the gap between rich and poor. Schemes such as the rural employment guarantee and the public distribution of food grains are attempts to ensure that prosperity reaches those at the bottom.

At bottom the topic is a statement about priorities and about meaning. Prosperity is a means, and justice is among the ends for which it is sought. A society that grows without sharing may still be measured as rich, but its riches will feel hollow to those excluded and will invite instability. A society that shares without growing has little to share. The hard task is to do both together. The honest conclusion is that neither goal can be put off for the other. Yet it is uncertain whether any country has ever got the sequence exactly right, since each era looks back on the justice of its predecessors as inadequate, and the prosperity that seemed sufficient then now seems modest.