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Interviews | Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate interviewed by Asha Rai

Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate interviewed by Asha Rai

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published Published on Jan 10, 2012   modified Modified on Jan 10, 2012

Economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, currently the Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University believes that mere economic growth cannot be equated with the wellness of people. Social indicators are an equally important measure. In Bangalore for the presentation of the Infosys Prize for 2011 ( Sen is the jury chair for social sciences), he spoke to TOI on a variety of topics. Excerpts:

Q: When India is doing well economically, isn't it dichotomous that interest in pure research and science is declining?

A: I don't entirely buy the story that interest in economic research has gone down in India. I think there are lots of competitive facilities abroad and they look out for Indians quite often. That affects the quality here. If your best students are going away to Harvard, Cambridge and Caltech, then that reduces the pressure on the system to cater to the very best.

The second thing is that the connection between economics as a discipline and economic success is not that easy. Economic success depends on so many things; the business climate, business community. In fact, the success of East Asia - South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore to start with and later China - was much more concerned with a combination of two factors: To have a broad basis for human capability expansion in the sense of basic education being widely available, basic healthcare being well looked after and combined with using the market economy with governmental supplementation. I think that combination worked very well. Subtleties of economics were not very involved in that. It was a fairly gross story. India initially missed the gross story.

First, when it missed the story in terms of not making adequate use of the market economy. But when liberalization came and they withdrew some of the licence raj controls they didn't take the second part of the East Asian experience.

I don't judge the performance of the Indian economy by growth alone. I'm still disturbed by the fact that India has the highest ratio of undernourished people in the world and so on. That's why we have to take the broader view.

Bangladesh has overtaken India in longevity, infant mortality, immunization rate, female literacy.

Q: Why is this happening?

A: I don't think there's enough clarity on economics here. The policy is still oriented towards economic growth. That's what the government wants and in a democracy, it's a political factor. The articulate group in India is not the 1% as in the United States according to the caricature of the Occupy Wall Street movement. But it's a broader category of about 20% who are doing pretty well, and they are perfectly happy.

Q: The government is catering to this 20% alone?

A: They have to. This is a democracy. The 20% are sufficiently vocal and sufficiently influential in Indian politics that they carry the votes with them.

Q: But they don't necessarily vote. So wouldn't the political class be interested in the remaining 80%?

A: The 20% do vote. I am not a psephologist but I follow the Indian elections. What's discussed in the papers and increasingly in the electronic media as well - which is big in India now - influences people's votes. If you are not constantly discussing the horse race of India catching up with China and surpassing it and discussing India being below Africa in terms of undernourishment, below Bangladesh in all the social criteria and our position in the world being worsened rather than advanced in a period of high growth rate, then I think the vulnerability of the political-economic strategy of catering primarily to growth and not to human capability expansion would get much more attention. And, the fact is, human capability expansion is also very critical for economic growth.
 
 

The Times of India, 10 January, 2012, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/I-dont-think-theres-enough-clarity-on-economics-here/articleshow/11431373.cms


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