Amartya Sen Attacks Policymakers For Ignoring Social Development

Economic luminary Amartya Sen yesterday criticised the countrys policy planners for ignoring basic aspects of social development, such as education, health and land reforms, while going ahead with liberalisation.

India would perhaps be the only country to enter the 21st century with half of its population being illiterate, he said in a conversation with mediapersons here. Opening up of the economy should go hand in hand with creation of social opportunities for deprived sections of society to ensure participatory development, he maintained.

The 63-year-old Lamont professor at Harvard University, USA, is in the Union capital to deliver the first Dr Rajendra Prasad memorial lecture today on Hunger in the contemporary world. The series has been organised by the Food Corporation of India in the memory of the countrys first president, Dr Rajendra Prasad, who also happened to be the first agriculture minister after independence.

 

Referring to former finance minister Manmohan Singh as a friend and a former colleague,

Sen said while he was over active in bringing about economic reforms and liberalisation, he was under-active in the areas of education, health and land reforms.

Even with high level of illiteracy, an economic growth rate as high as the present six to seven per cent a year is possible. But, the quality of growth would be far from desirable as a large section of society would not be able to participate in it, said Sen, who has won several coveted award for excellence in economic thought.

He, however, blamed the public, including the media, and the opposition for letting successive governments get away with neglecting the prime responsibility of improving health and education standards. These issues should have been politicised, forcing the government to either do something or pay the price (political price) for not doing anything, he said.

Famines do not normally occur in a democracy because there would be so much hue and cry against the starvation deaths that no democratically elected government would be able to afford it, he added.

There was no dearth of rhetoric on the intended priority to education, health and other social factors by every government since independence, but nothing had been done, Sen said.

Even the countrys first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, spoke in his famous tryst with destiny speech on August 15, 1947 about priority to these aspects. But, it was not translated into action.

Sen was also sceptical about the effectiveness of the present governments move to make primary education a fundamental right.

The illiterate people would not be able to litigate for claiming this right. The government has to be serious about it, he said.

Replying to a specific question about the role of the private sector in creating these facilities, Sen remarked that though the prime responsibility rested with the government, but the corporate sector, which would be the major beneficiaries of economic reforms, also owed something to society in this field.

Sen said the elitist nature of the two main religions in India Hinduism and Islam had a

lot to do with educational backwardness of the people. The Brahmins and the Mullahs took upon themselves the task of reading and reciting the scriptures on behalf of the common people.

In a religion like Buddhism, on the contrary, everybody was expected to read the scriptures himself. He had to be literate for this purpose. That is why the literacy rate is much higher in Buddhist countries than in India, he said.

Opening up of the economy should go hand in hand with creation of social opportunities for deprived sections of society to ensure participatory development.

Amartya Sen Lamont professor at Harvard University, USA