Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: July 28, 2013
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/coffee-break/its-not-about--economics-prof-sen-its-about-politics.html

By voicing his political preference, Amartya Sen is now one among many partisans. And, as a political partisan, he must not expect preferential treatment from those who don’t subscribe to his politics

Unlike many other commentators and analysts who claim profound knowledge of all things big and small, ranging from nuclear fission to social friction and waste management to development economics, I prefer to stick to what I know best: Politics and politicking, preferably of the old school variety. Hence, I won’t rush to comment on the raging debate on Amartya Sen’s prescription for recasting the Indian economy into something resembling that which proved ruinous for the Soviet state (that’s what his detractors say; my words merely reflect their collective opinion) and which has been enthusiastically embraced by the National Advisory Council, led by Sonia Gandhi, to be forced on Manmohan Singh who would rather be meek and play along than be asked to pack up and vacate the boxy CPWD bungalow at 7 Race Course Road. There’s something addictive about houses with bay windows that open into rolling lawns.

 Scholars who are intellectually much more endowed than me are doing a fine job of matching Sen word for word. Jagdish Bhagwati has been pitilessly tearing into what is now being described by Sen’s detractors as ‘voodoo economics’. There are others too who have been harsh in their assessment of Sen’s economic prescription and his endorsement of the food security programme. Last week I spoke to Surjit S Bhalla who was, to put it mildly, scathing about Sen while ridiculing the food security programme. Although I have read the text of the Food Security Bill I can’t say I can comment on it with equal felicity of language; what I do understand is that the proposed cure for India’s poverty is worse than the disease. I also realise that we are regressing into a past we thought we had left behind — the decades of 1960s-1980s when lesser mortals had to cope with a shortage economy, limit their aspiration to a life of forced frugality and con themselves into believing that denial and deprivation were lofty virtues that were preached to us by our pink champagne-sipping ‘socialist’ leaders.

 All this and more, however, does not qualify me to comment on Sen’s economics. But after hearing and reading the acerbic reactions of those who are qualified to do so I am reminded of an Aesop’s fable — the one about the grasshopper and the ant. Years ago I had received an e-mail from a friend which contained two versions of the fable. I will try and recollect, to the best of my memory, the contents of that mail, with suitable amendments to make it relevant for our times:Old version

 The ant works hard in the heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant’s a fool and dances the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has neither shelter nor food, so he dies out in the cold.New version

 The ant works hard in the heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant’s a fool and dances the summer away. Come winter, Amartya Sen lands in Delhi where he goes television studio-hopping, sorrowfully wondering why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well-fed while the grasshopper is cold and starving.

 That would be before the food security programme was pushed through, of course, assuring all grasshoppers of home, hearth and food, thanks to the bountiful magnanimity of Sonia Gandhi, acting on the advice of Sen and his favourite student Jean Drèze. Hard work and enterprise were, and continue to be, synonymous with crime; indolence and dependence on dole by a maai-baap state were, and continue to be, virtues to be nourished at the expense of taxpayers. This is called infusing economics with conscience. That’s a lesson that I have learned in recent days. What I have also learned is that it is perfectly fine to pose as a democrat, declare your faith in democracy, accuse others of violating the basic principles of a democracy, and then do something that is fundamentally undemocratic.

 I am referring to Amartya Sen’s considered advice to Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh not to wait for Parliament’s approval of the National Food Security Bill, 2013, but implement it by issuing an ordinance. Sen would argue that too many lives were at stake to bother about parliamentary niceties, democracy be damned, in seeking approval for the food security Bill. True. What’s `3,00,000 crore down the drain so long as nobody gets to call me out? Sen would never reply, but it’s worth the effort to ask him: How many lives were saved by taking recourse to un-parliamentary means made fashionable in another era by another Mrs Gandhi? But it ill suits me to raise such questions. After all, I am no economist nor am I a philosopher; indeed, I have not even seen the inside of a lecture hall at Cambridge or Oxford.

 What I do know and can say with certitude is that Sen is more than an economist and/or philosopher: As he would say, like all of us, he has multiple identities. One of these identities is that of a political partisan, acquired this past week. As an Indian citizen he is entitled to his choice of politics as much as anybody else. He has the right to support or oppose a particular party or a specific leader. To that extent, there is nothing objectionable about his telling one news TV channel that as “an Indian citizen… I don’t want Narendra Modi as Prime Minister.” Nor is it wrong of him to tell a rival news TV channel, “Rahul Gandhi might be an excellent alternative … Do I like Rahul Gandhi? Yes… he is from my college. When I talk to him, I enjoy it…”  Any one of us can hold similar views (though not many of us could even remotely claim to have gone to the same college as Rahul Gandhi or enjoying a chat with him) but none of us is Amartya Sen. As a public figure, he has made his choices public not to merely let us know what he thinks and feels but to influence the way we think and feel so that we begin to think and feel the way he does. Sen knows this better than anybody else. The timing of his going public with his political preferences is neither accidental nor casual. That makes him a political partisan.

 As an economist, Sen may be high above us mere mortals, perched atop a pedestal. But as a political partisan, he is one of us, with biases that are no different from those we nourish and nurture. It could be claimed that his biases are ‘good’ and those of partisans who disagree with him are ‘bad’. That, however, is purely subjective and not borne out by empirical evidence which lies at the core of any objective assessment. And, having chosen to be a political partisan, Sen can’t complain if he is subjected to the same kind of heckling as all partisans are.

 This is not about your economics, professor; it is about your politics. So get ready to receive some of the rotten tomatoes that you have begun throwing at others. That would be in the best tradition of Indian democracy of which you are a “believer and a proud citizen” —there’s more to politics in this country than uncontested speech in the rarefied, air-conditioned atmosphere of TV studios and conference halls. Not all of it is pretty.