Are night lights on earth captured by satellites from outer space a good way to measure inequality? Economists Praveen Chakravarty and Vivek Dehejia, from the Mumbai-based think tank IDFC Institute, 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.

Using data generated by the night lights, they studied 387 of 640 districts in 12 states in India. These districts account for 85% of India’s population and 80% of its GDP¹. 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. 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. “What we find is that both across states and across districts within each state, this is a wide, and widening disparity in economic activity. No, it is not that the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer, but that the poor are not getting richer fast enough to close the gap with the already rich,” says Dr Dehejia. So why are disparities within India rising even as standards of living are going up? Some economists believe it could be due to poor governance and lack of adequate skills for jobs in poorer areas. But, in the end, it remains a puzzle.

(Soutik Biswas. www.bbc.com, 27.05.2018. Adaptado.) 

¹GDP: Gross Domestic Product, one of the primary indicators of the state of a country’s economy