HVK Archives: India has failed its people
India has failed its people - Asian Age
Kalpana chauhan
()
March 22, 1998
Title: India has failed its people
Author: Kalpana chauhan
Publication: Asian Age
Date: March 22, 1998
To the onlooker, the Royal appointment as Master of Trinity
College seems like the chance of a life time but for the
scholarly Amartya Kumar Sen, it is only yet another distinction
in a life that has been marked with laurels.
"I didn't at first want to accept it," says,' Professor Sen of
the appointment. "It took me six weeks between the letter from
Prime Minister Tony Blair and final acceptance."
What made him take on the offer was pure sentimentality and some
practical reasons. "I suppose the determining considerations
included Trinity being my old College. I have a great sense of
belonging' for the place. My wife ---- Rothschild is also a
Fellow at Cambridge of King's College so it would mean that the
travelling between America and England would be eased."
Having made the decision to end his career of 10 years at Harvard
University as Professor of Economics and Philosophy, the
essentially left of centre academic found himself flung amid the
pomp and circumstance of fourhundred year old ceremonies
including the elaborate Trinity tradition of the Master first
knocking on the door of the college, being refused entry and then
finally being installed as Master in Trinity Chapel. Not really
being big on ceremonies Professor Sen says he just about managed
to "maintain a sense of the occasion," on that winter day on 14
January, witnessed by frenzied flashbulbs and media attention.
He does not feel that being the first Asian man to be appointed
to the post was the reason behind the media frenzy that marked
the event.
"It is the nature of the installation and there is always going
to be news interest, whoever gets appointed. Trinity College does
not get to appoint its head of college and the appointment by the
Queen, in effect, the Prime Minister, does tend to receive a lot
of attention."
As master of Trinity College, Professor Sen's essential
responsibilities are to head and represent the college and to
chair the College Council and the finance committee meetings of
the richest college in Cambridge.
At 64, the professor says he never knew or thought of any other
lifestyle or career except an academic one. This may partly be
due to the fact that he was born in an Indian college campus in
Shantiniketan, where his grandfather was a professor of Sanskrit.
His father was a professor of chemistry at Dhaka University, and
he represents the third generation of academics in his family.
"My entire life has revolved around academia. It is very nice to
have an academic life." .
The only time that Professor Sen recalls being at crossroads
regarding a decision was when he had to choose in high school
which route to take academically.
"I spent sleepless nights deciding whether I would be a
classicist or a mathematician. I wanted to do something more
modem but I did enjoy Sanskrit. The decision was extremely
important." He later went on to specialise in Economics and to
teach at Cambridge, Jadavapur, Delhi, L.S.E., Oxford and Harvard
universities.
Professor Sen plays down his achievements despite the long list
of doctorates and honours (which are still being accumulated as
we speak) that he has received in the past 45 years. He got the
Indira Gandhi Gold Medal Award of the Asiatic Society in 1994 and
has published 19 books and around 250 articles.
He says modestly, "A lot of people have these achievements," but
adds, "I have been very lucky in many ways. I have been lucky in
research results and in having research collaborators willing to
work with me."
He is quite content with the achievements he had made so far and
if there are still any personal ambitions that he harbours, they
revolve around "getting involved with the future of, India."
India, in fact, seems to invoke a great deal of concern with.
Professor Sen, who has in the past written a huge body of work on
Indian economy and society since Independence. He says" "India
has failed its promise to the people. I was still a young boy on
the eve of Independence on 14 August 1947 when Nehru talked about
'India's tryst with destiny' and he talked of a future that would
be free of inequality and poverty, full education for the masses
and economic growth. 50 years on, India still has a long way to
go."
His concerns for India go beyond the theoretical. "I go to India
at least three times a year and take part in public discussions,"
he says.
"Although I have spent a lot of time outside of India I am still
very much an Indian. I have always tried to speak strongly on
issues of social inequality and neglect. I am often accused of
repeating myself and I think a lot of people are used to this
fact. I will continue to speak on these issues repeatedly as long
as there is neglect in curbing social, political and economic
inequality."
In his formative years, there were two defining experiences that
would shape the outcome of Professor Sen's life: The riots in
Dhaka between Hindus and Muslims in the early Forties and the
Bengal famine in 1943.
"The victims in the famine 'always affected people only at the
lower end of the social spectrum. I remember feeling very upset
when an emaciated man, who had stayed in our local school campus,
was being bullied by boys. He was suffering from malnutrition and
consequently suffered from some form of mental derangement. I
tried to talk with him. It was a very shaking experience. The
famine was very divisive and aid not really affect. anyone in the
middle classes' "
He continues, "The riots were also very disturbing because my
region Bengal Wasn't known for communal violence. A poor Muslim
man who needed to make money was compelled by economic poverty to
go deliver baggage to the house of my neighbour in a
predominately Hindu area in Dhaka. He was set upon by 'Hindu
thugs' and was left bleeding near the gate of my house. My father
was not at home so I went to him and tried to give him some
water. It was out of economic necessity that he had to go out to
find work despite knowing the dangers involved. The man told me,
as we were waiting for help to arrive, had no option but to go
out. I had put my trust in God."' In this case God did not help.
The victim died on his way to hospital. These experiences were
among the catalysts that made him strongly think about inequality
and politics and what repercussions they have on peoples' lives.
It were these episodes, and an environment strongly influenced by
reasoned debate, that reinforced Professor Sen's inclination to
be an atheist.
"I strongly believe that people should arrive at what they
believe on a basis of informed. analysis and evaluation and not
on what is perceived as the general beliefs of the community.
People seem to forget that Sanskrit and pali have the largest
collection of atheistic literature more than any other country in
the world and this is overlooked by Hindu chauvinists who claim
the whole of the Indian past as religious and Hindu, and overlook
India's long history of heterodoxy' "
Occasionally, he finds the time to take in a play. "I find the
idea of seeing a play at the end of the day a nice and relaxing
idea," he says,
Although his heart seems to belong to India, Professor Sen says
he has been comfortable in all the countries he has had the
opportunity to work and live.
"My children complain that I lack standards because I tend to be
happy everywhere I go:' he says.
He doesn't say that his children are joking, but it is a foregone
conclusion: a man with a lack of standards is hardly how the
world of education will describe Amartya Kumar Sen.
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