Letters: Chalk and cheese

Apropos the article "The Bhagwati-Sen Debate: An Epitaph" (August 9), Jagdish Bhagwati and Amartya Sen are as different as chalk and cheese.

Sen has consistently ignored the centrality of growth in raising the incomes, and hence the consumption and living standard of the poor while even denouncing the proponents of growth as misguided. In sharp contrast, Bhagwati has written in support of growth as necessary to reduce poverty since the 1950s.

Second, totally unlike Sen, Bhagwati criticised India's counterproductive policies in his "India: Planning for Industrialization" in 1970 and argued for a policy course correction during the years of Indira Gandhi's socialism.

Third, Sen supports the dysfunctional public distribution system and finds universalisation a better way to make welfare schemes more effective, unlike Bhagwati who supports modern and cost-effective cash transfers and voucher schemes.

Fourth, currently Sen has supported the expansion of the food security Bill when the economy is growing slowly and the government faces an obvious resource constraint. By contrast, Bhagwati has argued strongly against Sen's populist prescription and warned of an economic disaster for both the United Progressive Alliance government and the poor.

Fifth, Bhagwati is an "argumentative Indian" who has had many public debates with many leading figures over the years, unlike Sen who shies away from debates. Recently, Bhagwati wrote boldly in Financial Times about plagiarism even though his good friend Fareed Zakaria had been caught up in a plagiarism scandal.

Sixth, Sen's views in his latest book are a misleading attempt at repositioning himself on economic reforms. In this book, he finally accepts the Bhagwati line that high growth enables greater social spending though elsewhere, (for example in his letter to The Economist) he continues to assert without evidence or logic that significant social expenditures could have been undertaken without growth-enhancing reforms; consistency and coherence are not his forte!

Manish Kumar Patna

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