T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan:No Thought, please, we are economists

Why is the history of economic thought not taught anymore?

This column originated in The Hindu a few years ago out of sheer irritation at the intellectual arrogance of economists who were barely out of their nappies. Too many of them thought they were discovering something new when, in fact, it had all been said before, perhaps even 200 years before.

I mentioned this to my good friend Brijeshwar Singh (who had missed his true vocation as an academic economist and joined the IAS instead). As usual, he put his finger on it. "No one teaches the history of economic thought anymore." Even in the 1960s, it had been an optional subject - even at the Delhi School of Economics, which should have known better. I don't know if it is there any longer at all anywhere.

Another friend suggested I should, when I could, try and write about the history of economic thought if only to put the modern know-alls in their place. The idea would be to show - in 800 words - what I thought of them. But another friend said it would only be of marginal interest.

Whence, by the way, the name of the column.

Flippancy aside, economics seems to be the only discipline that routinely disregards what has gone before so very quickly. Or, worse, it says the same things under different names every 20 years or so.

Fashion industry?

Looking around, a line from T S Eliot comes to mind. "Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future/ And time future contained in time past."

Modern economists, before they preen like peacocks, should pay heed to it because the problem remains: if you don't know the past of what you are thinking about, how will you tackle the future of whatever it is you are thinking about? Historia magistra vitae est. History is life's teacher.

The issue, I think, is important because if economists who got their PhDs after 1975 have no clue of what economists for the previous 200 years had said, how much can you trust their judgement? I mean, how many of the economists who hold forth today have heard of Marquis de Condorcet, who was the first to study preference orderings, of Augustin Cournot of competition theory, of Francois Quesnay, the first physiocrat, of William Jevons, who fathered mathematical economics, or, for that matter, of even Ricardo who explained rents? How many have heard of Edward Chamberlain, Joan Robinson, Lionel Robbins and the rest of the 1930s gang? Even Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow have become passe, not to mention W Arthur Lewis, Paul N Rosenstein-Rodan, Hla Myint, Raul Prebisch to name a few of the development economists from the 1950s.

Why, even the game theory whose mathematical insights seem quite immutable, has become a victim to this syndrome. Even Kenneth Arrow's seminal work is now regarded as being 'old'. Imagine saying Newton's Laws of Motion are old-fashioned.

I could go on but the point, I presume, is made. It is that human capital depreciates faster in economics than in any other discipline. In that sense, economics is a lot like the fashion industry.

This leads to another question: how useful are economists today who got their PhDs before, say, 1995? If economists who got their PhDs between 1970 and 1995 think that everyone who came earlier can be disregarded, why can't the same rule apply to them? After all, those who got their PhDs between 1970 and 1995 did so in an intellectual regime that no longer exists, according to the economists themselves. Then how can they be trusted to sensibly analyse the world as it exists now?

Forgotten economists

Let me conclude, after the fashion of the day, by referring to India's past glories, in this case the history of Indian economic thought. A few years ago, J Krishnamurti, one of India's leading economic historians, edited and published a volume of papers written by pre-Independence Indian economists. It is a little treasure trove in which we get a fascinating glimpse into a whole range of issues from monetary and fiscal policy, protection, employment and labour market conditions to credit systems, industry, the rural economy, women in development, macro-economic policy, and even environmental economics. All before 1947.

To name only a few, how many Indian economists have heard of Sir Manohar Lal, who was one of the finest pre-Independence finance ministers, of C N Vakil, who wrote about the economics of communal tensions, Gyan Chand, who said growth would not trickle down by itself, and Radhakamal Mukerjee, who was the first to focus on the balance between population, land and water?

Not one, I am willing to bet.