Are night lights on earth captured by satellites from outer space a good way to measure inequality?
Economists Praveen Chakravarty and Vivek Dehejia certainly believe so. They acquired images grabbed by satellites from the US Air Force Defence Meteorological Satellite Programme. These satellites circle the earth 14 times a day and record lights from the earth's surface at night with sensors. They superimposed a map depicting India's districts on their images, allowing them to develop a unique data set of luminosity values, by district and over time.
Using data generated by the night lights, they studied of 387 of 640 districts in 12 states. These districts account for 85% of India's population and 80% of its GDP. Some 87% of parliamentary seats are in these districts. Using the novel methodology, the economists documented income divergence in India.
Most of India is dark at night because there is little economic activity going on. But the delicate tracery of lights as seen from space also showed that the states are becoming more unequal between and within them.
Some 380 districts in 12 states were on average just a fifth as bright as the big cities of Mumbai and Bangalore.
Also, 90% of all the districts are just a third as bright in the night as the top 10% of all districts. And the ratio has worsened between 1992 - a year after India embraced economic reforms - and 2013.
While the pre-1991 years show a modest trend towards convergence of income between different states, the years after show widening divergence. By 2014, the economists found, the average person in the three richest states (Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra) was three times as rich as the average person in the three poorest states (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh).
This inequality is higher than before Gandhi!
Independence, and Gandhi democracy, actually set India back! According to these economists.
You have to trust economists!
These poor bastards would have been so much better off under the British. Trust me.
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