Amartya Sen Interview
nkdatta8839
Telegraph, Kolkata, India
Friday, January 1, 2010
The Sen interview: Nothing wrong with seeking change. The central
question is what kind of a Bengal do we want?
The first decade of the millennium proved to be a study in contrasts.
It began on a doomful note with the war on terrorism, followed by a
series of terrible highs and lows. The global economy looked up, then
plummeted. In various parts of the world, people lost, won or lobbied
for their human rights. With the advent of global citizenship, climate
change became a serious talking point on the highest international
fora. On Christmas Day, during a long car ride from Pratichi in
Santiniketan to Dum Dum airport in Calcutta, Nobel Laureate AMARTYA
SEN spoke to Somak Ghoshal of The Telegraph on the shape of the decade
gone by as well as the challenges that lie ahead of India, and the
world, in the next 10 years. Excerpts from the interview:
Q: What is your assessment of the last decade?
A: The last decade has seen a lot of exciting things, both positive
and negative. The negatives are probably more dominant. We saw 9/11
and the accentuation of global terrorism. On November 26, 2008, there
was a ghastly incident in Mumbai. There was also organised violence of
a non-terrorist, but sectarian and communal, kind. Perhaps the pre-
eminent example of that would be the Gujarat killings of 2002. There
were other such events around the world, as in Sudan, which saw the
targeting of the southern Christian population by extremists from the
north.
There was the completely misconceived war in Iraq, based on the
hypothesis that Iraq had an alliance with al Qaida, which was not
true, and that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which was also
not true. But it was certainly true that Iraq had a dictatorial
regime. However, there are many other countries with dictatorial
regimes. So it was an oddly ill-conceived war, which put the fight
against global terrorism back rather than forward. There was also an
intervention in Afghanistan, though with more logic to it; it did lead
to the displacement of the Taliban. This, too, was one of the
consequences of 9/11, and certainly had some positive effect in
Afghanistan in preventing the busting of girls’ schools and the
punishing of people with any kind of non-orthodox view. But such
activities are still going on, partly fed by the deflection of
American concentration on Afghanistan, thanks to Iraq. A confrontation
that began early in the decade is still continuing.
There have, however, been some positive achievements as well, of which
an understanding of the need to take internationally co-ordinated
action on global warming is a very important example. There is also a
greater understanding that terrorism cannot be dealt with by any
unilateral approach. No country, not even the US, can plausibly
dictate to other countries how they should think. The fact that
unilateral approaches, including the US-led policy of military
intervention in Iraq, have been so problematic has made the importance
of multilateralism much better understood.
There was also an important positive change in America in the form of
moving away from ignoring the views of the rest of the world to a
position in which Barack Obama takes a much more world-friendly view.
It is also a social change in which issues of domestic justice,
including medical benefits for all American citizens, have become
important in American politics.
Indeed, America was the only rich country in the world which did not
have medical insurance automatically provided for every citizen or
legal resident. That it still doesn’t have. But, by the recent changes
that are going on, there would be a much greater opportunity for the
American citizen or legal resident to make use of the medical
facilities that the country is able to offer. So there have been some
positive changes, including a better recognition of the need for
global thinking, whether it be on multilateralism in tackling
terrorism or in addressing global warming. Also, some progress has
been made in advancing the understanding of the need for more global
justice, and specifically for the elimination of some huge cases of
global injustice, such as rampant illiteracy, ill-treatment of women,
and people dying of diseases without medicine or any medical attention
even though effective treatments are known and appropriate medicines
are inexpensive to produce. On these issues there is much more vocal
and informed discussion today than in the previous decades. I would
regard these as substantial achievements. But we have to see how these
recognitions translate into policies and public actions over the next
decade or so.
Q: While taking office for the second time last year, Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh spoke of the “decisive decade”. In what ways do you
think it would be decisive?
A: I think Manmohan may have been partly talking about the world, but
he was also talking about India in this. In India, there was a kind of
popularity of the communalist approach, led by the Hindutva movement,
which seemed to be in ascendancy in the last two decades. But in the
decade that’s just finishing, what had seemed like a relentless march
towards greater and greater sectarian understanding of Indian politics
had a big setback.
I think Manmohan’s first prime ministership in 2004 came at the end of
a marginal victory on the part of the secular parties led by the
Congress. Since then, secularism as one of the major planks or
platforms of Indian democracy has been consolidated, including in the
2009 elections, when the Hindutva-oriented parties had a further
setback. So I think it is possible that in making the statement you
quote, Manmohan might have been concerned about putting Indian
secularism on a very firm footing in the coming decade.
Manmohan must have been also concerned, in the quoted remark, with the
economic development of the country. India’s growth has been quite
high over the last decade, even though the sharing of the gains of
that development has been quite unequal. There is a huge potential for
doing much more with the resources that are generated by high growth.
And I think that when he described the next 10 years as the “decisive
decade”, he was thinking both of maintaining India’s high growth and
departing from the past in making the results of development much more
equitably shared than what happens at the moment.
And there, in my judgement, he could sensibly begin with extending
basic education and basic healthcare to all. Whether the policies that
will come will entirely live up to the expectations generated by the
demands would be important to watch.
Also, the role of India in the world is something, I do know, worries
Manmohan, and he will welcome the fact that India seems to have a much
better reception in the world now as a global actor. He would want
that to be further strengthened and consolidated.
Q: What are the likely pitfalls that lie ahead of India?
A: Pitfalls are always difficult to guess because you can typically
perceive that you are in a pitfall only when you actually fall! So I’m
not sure that it would be easy to predict what the potential pitfalls
are. But certainly, India has had a role in the past of voicing
concerns that are not only its own but also of the underdogs of the
world. After India became independent in 1947, for many years after
that, India was maddening the rest of the world by being hugely
moralistic about its own role in championing the cause of the
underdogs of society. But even though that vocal level was probably
not sustainable, and not entirely fair to the other countries, the
fact remains that there was a strong sense of global concern in
India’s position.
India has been very successful in some ways in terms of domestic
expansion of the economy and in terms of the global recognition of its
importance (even though it has not been terribly successful in other
respects, for example, in expanding healthcare and basic education for
all Indians). There is, however, a danger in the possibility that
India has become — or at least has given the impression of having
become — less concerned with fairness to the underdogs of the world
and much more concerned with its own self-interest. Now, any nation
making its policy will naturally put some of its self-interests in a
special position: in some ways that is indeed what the government is,
among other things, charged to do. But then, that’s not the only thing
that a government is charged to do. We are not only citizens of a
country, we are also citizens of an interdependent world.
Take the case of global climate. It is right that India should point
out that the Americans and Europeans have polluted the world in the
past for a long time. That’s a justified complaint. But I think
historical restitution never quite works. The lines taken by Nelson
Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King Jr. saying “Forget trying
to get justice for the past, but bear in mind the inheritance of the
injustice of the past in injustice today and try to do something about
it” — that I believe is the right approach.
Therefore, wanting a global contract that is fairer to the interests
of the poorer parts of the world, including India, China or Brazil, is
appropriate.
But then to say that there is no contract we will ever sign if it’s
binding, seems to me to assume that we have an exemption from our
global citizenship role that other countries in Europe or America
cannot have. I think our attitude requires a critical evaluation
because after all it is the job of every country to decide what it can
fairly do to reduce a global danger that the entire humanity is facing
today. To say that we will under no circumstances accept a binding
contract isn’t a very good way of beginning to talk. A much better way
of beginning is to say that we will indeed be party to accepting a
contract, even a binding contract, provided the contract itself is
fair and takes into account our legitimate concerns and those of other
countries that are poor.
The second point I’ll make is that there are still other countries
which are very poor and which are not having the economic growth rate
of China or India or Brazil or South Africa. That includes the bulk of
the continent of Africa and some of Asia too. So there is an issue of
fairness to the world, and India should not savour the role of doing
to Africa today what Europe and America have done to India in the
past, namely fill up what may be called the “global commons” — that is
the global atmosphere — with its own muscular presence while leaving
very little room for Africa’s economic development.
As Africa starts developing, it will still have the same kind of
problems that India speaks about today, namely, the need to have some
emissions that go with economic growth, which would be a part of
Africa’s attempt to expand its living standards. So we have to take a
wiser and a fairer view of the world community and the globality of
our moral concerns.
There is a certain danger that in the flush of nationalist rhetoric
our moral understanding may be lost. I know this is not a popular
call. After talking about all this in a meeting in Delhi, I can see
from the Internet that I’ve been comprehensively attacked by many for
being against India’s interests. Well, I’m not being against India at
all! I’m just pointing out why we must try to stand up for the
interests of the poor in the world, and that includes us. We have to
stand up also for the poor who are not having even the benefit of
growth now, or an opportunity to expand their living standards (with
more emissions right now). We have to take into account the future,
and the future particularly of countries that are often even poorer
than India is. There is nothing anti-Indian in reviving the spirit of
a global sense of fairness, which has been a part of our national
thinking — it was quite central to our national movement right from
the beginning. What Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal
Nehru articulated again and again was part of what fired our national
movement. It is important that we (I speak here as a proud Indian
citizen) do not lose the rich heritage of global awareness that we
have.
Q: You have already extensively articulated your thoughts on primary
education in India. Where do you see Indian higher education going in
the next decade?
A: I bore everyone silly by talking again and again of primary
education. Even though your invitation to me is to talk of higher
education, I won’t get there without first talking about primary
education. This is because India has expanded its higher education at
least quantitatively in a very dramatic way, in some ways
qualitatively too, while primary education, despite some expansion, is
still relatively neglected. We still have a high proportion of
illiteracy, a high proportion of schoolchildren who actually don’t go
to school for one reason or another — because of the lack of
facilities, the lack of school sometimes, or the lack of quality
teaching. As you know, the Pratichi trust, which was started with my
Nobel money about a decade ago, has been very concerned about how to
increase the coverage as well as the quality and effectiveness of
primary education. In my judgement, that remains a bigger challenge
than higher education.
Having said that, since you’ve asked me about higher education, I’d
say that there has been a kind of differential success in some areas
like in technical education, where quality control has been quite well
observed, as in the IITs, the IIMs, and also in some elite colleges
connected with the sciences and the arts and traditional higher
education. So in patches, we have produced very good higher education,
but there are also a whole lot of higher educational institutions in
which quality needs much greater attention than expansion.
We have already had a lot of expansion, now we need consolidation.
There is more need to pay attention to quality today than earlier when
the number of universities was small. It’s very good that we have so
many universities now and so many people get doctorates, but it is
critical that the quality of education be enhanced to make it
commensurate with the promise that higher education offers.
Q: Is there a fair way in which the issue of land for industry could
be resolved over the next 10 years?
A: There’s always a fairer way than other ways because that is the
nature of these judgements. If there’s no solution that you regard to
be really fair, then you have to see that among the ones that are not
really fair, which is the least unfair of them all. And that will be
the fairer solution under the circumstances. That’s one of the
arguments in my book, The Idea of Justice, namely that you don’t look
for a perfect system, but you look for how to remove injustice and
unfairness in the world to the extent we can and as speedily as
possible.
Are there ways of enhancing the land policies that exist now? I would
suggest three different aspects of the land question, which is a very
misunderstood question and polarises people. This question has not
been as well thought through as it could be, given the tradition of
cerebral politics in India, of having very high quality analysis that
goes into economic thinking, which forms the backbone of political
issues. The ways and means of expanding education, healthcare and land
reform have always had an intelligently and decently worked out
intellectual basis. There have been arguments and counter-arguments
and the pros and cons of policies on education and healthcare are
fairly well understood now. The land question remains rather fog-
bound, if I may put it that way, in loudly articulated pronouncements
— on different sides.
So what are the problems that need special attention? There is, first,
the political issue. If you take land with the object of it being used
for industry, that object could be effectively frustrated by
opposition by political groups if they see in it their interest to do
just that. A policy that cannot be implemented — no matter how fair in
itself — cannot be a very good policy. There is no such thing as some
policies being “right in theory but not in practice”, because if they
are not right in practice, then they are not right in theory if that
theory is concerned with practice.
Central to the political issue in a democracy like India, where any
party can make a huge mess by organised protests, there is need for
political maturity on all sides, and the necessity of a certain
understanding among political parties to see that if something is in
the interest of the region or the country then that should be allowed
to go ahead rather than stopping it by using the means that a
democratic structure tends to allow. It is easy enough in Indian
politics to bust up pretty much any arrangement through an enormous
amount of agitation and sometimes even through violence.
There is a need for those who institute these policies to take into
account the likely political impact, including that of land
acquisition. Take Singur, which was such a big political event last
year. Bengal does need industries (and the general approach into which
Singur fits was not wrong in that general perspective), but there was
a case for not regarding the acquisition of land as the first resort.
Indeed, my argument, which I have spelled out in two articles in The
Telegraph more than a year ago (The Industrial Strategy, Dec. 29, and
Policy by Discussion, Dec. 30, 2007), has been that forcible
acquisition of land should not be the first resort — it can only be
the last resort when much of the land has been freely bought by the
industrialist in question. (I have to note some frustration here that
some critics of my alleged views like quoting me “second-hand” but
citing from an interview I gave – preferring to rely on what a
reporter thought I said – rather than examining what I actually said
in my own essays!) You can buy a lot of land just on the basis of
market prices and they are not a very crippling part of the investment
cost for industry. Try to use as much of the market as possible in
acquiring land, because industries operate on market principles and
there’s no reason why that should not also apply to land.
However, it may turn out that much of the land has been secured but
there are small bits that are holding up the whole project. People can
make a huge amount of money by holding a key to the feasibility of a
factory. That may be a moment, with the consent of the population and
with the help of public discussion, to say that now we have reached
the stage of last resort, where we have to acquire. The public can
understand that argument much better than a first-resort acquisition
of land.
The second issue is not just political feasibility, but that of
fairness to the owner. If you have actually purchased the land in the
market, then at least the concern that was very dominant in Singur,
namely, whether people were getting a fair compensation for their
land, would not have arisen because they would have sold the land only
if they had reason to sell it. As a last resort, if you have to
acquire some land because some people are demanding astronomical
prices, using their blackmailing ability in preventing a factory, then
the case for acquisition may well arise. So I think in terms of the
interests of doing justice to the owners of land, the policy that I’m
suggesting would have features not only of political feasibility but
also of fairness to the owners of land.
The third aspect is very important, and often neglected: that the
people whose interests are affected are not only the owners of land.
They are, positively, those who would benefit from the industrial
development, and negatively, those who may be dependent on agriculture
without owning the land. Bhaagchashi would be a good example of the
latter. In that case, there would be a need to see that justice is
done to them. That has to be a part of the public policy of the
government, namely the interest of the community. The interests of the
non-landowning population have to be considered taking into account
both what is being lost and what is being gained — and for whom. In
the case of Singur, there were interests of the general population in
industrial expansion that the rhetoric of the oppositional movements
tended to ignore: there are economic benefits in getting jobs either
in the factory or through economic expansion in the surrounding area
connected with the factory. Singur, which I often pass when going by
car between Santiniketan and Kolkata, now stands like a ghost town. If
it had developed there would have been a booming economy around it,
and that would have given an enormous amount of jobs to the people.
That issue cannot be brushed away even if the political rhetoric of
the oppositional movements did not favour that concern.
On the other hand, there is a further question about the interests of
the peasants and of the local population. Would the displaced people
have been able to get jobs in the factory? How much would they benefit
from the local business boom that would have undoubtedly accompanied
industrial development in Singur? There are good reasons, based on
economic reasoning, to think that the local boom — now sadly lost —
would have been substantially beneficial to the local population in
and around Singur, but we do need a critically scrutinised
confirmation that this general economic expectation is indeed correct
and robust. These issues are not only for the government to think
about, but also for the media as well as Opposition parties. As far as
the general issue of justice to the people at large is concerned, it
is very important for all the parties — the government, the
Opposition, the protest leaders — to consider, with seriousness and
sincerity, the interests of the diverse community that make up any
particular regional population. It would certainly be helpful for the
government to have public discussions on these subjects with other
parties to arrive at some conclusion on what would be the right thing
for the government to do.
Q: So what is your overall “take” on the Singur events and their
aftermath, and the general demand for “change” that has become so
popular in West Bengal since those days of agitation around Singur?
A: My take on the Singur issue is that the basic idea of industrial
development is right (and West Bengal does need many more industries
for rebuilding a prosperous economy), and in that respect, Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee’s basic policy was correct. And yet there were two major
lacunae in the governmental implementation of the industrialisation
strategy. One was in treating land acquisition as the first resort
rather than as the last resort, and the other in not having adequate
public discussion with other parties to arrive at some agreed
conclusions.
Now, it’s sometimes said that if the Opposition does not want to sit
down with you, you can’t force them. If there is a tremendous amount
of effort to try to get the Opposition to sit down with you and even
then you don’t succeed, then, of course, an intelligent voter will pay
attention to the fact that there was a real effort on your part to do
that. The public does pay sympathetic attention to genuine efforts.
Given the way that West Bengal politics has developed in recent years,
there’s so much disaffection now with the ruling CPM leadership,
people tend to think that nothing else matters but what is called
“change”. But we have to ask what kind of a “change” would be able to
generate economic development, social stability and fairness to the
people. Would a mere change in the political party in power ensure the
rule of law and order, which is absolutely essential for economic
development as well as for social peace and security?
Bengal has been one of the most industrialised parts of the world
since long back. Even Ptolemy wrote about the prosperity of the region
through industrial development. Traders from country after country,
the British, the Danes, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the
Flemish, the Dutch, were competing with each other in the 17th and
18th centuries to do trading in this part of the world, mainly getting
industrial products. Our prosperity was based on industry, in addition
to a flourishing agriculture, between which there need be no rivalry.
When Britain occupied India, Bengal was the richest part of the
country, and today it’s become one of the poorer parts. In this the de-
industrialisation of Bengal — in the British colonial period and also
after Independence —has played a big part.
The CPM policies of the past also contributed to this condition, not
just because of the intransigence I was referring to, but through
giving industrial leaders the impression that this was a not very
friendly state to base your industries in. The CPM has reversed its
obstructionist policies now — indeed quite strongly —but by the time
the policies were reversed, the general disaffection with the CPM was
such that people wanted it to go. (Many of the opponents of the
government — both on the Right and on the Left — seem strangely unsure
now about the critically important role of industrialisation, which
need not be at all harmful to agriculture in general.) There has been
a growing and increasingly vocal demand for “change” – and only for
“change”. Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting change,
if we think through what kind of a change is needed. Now there’s an
odd alliance of some who are much more to the Left of the CPM joining
hands with those who are much more to the Right of the CPM. What they
have in common is opposition to the CPM. And one would say here that
to some extent, in the dialectics of West Bengal politics, the CPM has
contributed to this disaffection around it, whereby both at the Right
and the Left people may be opposed to it and united against it. But
this is also a time for the population of West Bengal in general to
rethink where they are actually going. Simply to say “we want change:
full stop!” is not itself a very articulate view. It depends on change
of what kind, in what form — what constructively do we want?
The most articulated part of the policy of “change” on which a
consensus is sought between the Right Opposition and the Left
Opposition is to say that we want to displace the ruling party from
office. Then, there will be different people occupying those offices.
Well, that’s not an adequate policy, even if it tends to appeal to
those who are fed up with the Left Front being in office for so long.
The question is when you yourself come to office what are you going to
do? How are you going to establish law and order? How do you propose
to remove injustice to the neglected underdogs of society? How would
you reverse Maoist violence without ignoring the sense of injustice,
especially to tribal people, from which that violence draws its
strength? How would you prevent the CPM from doing to you what you may
be doing to the present government — by busting governmental plans of
economic transformation? How would you develop industry? How would you
re-establish the sense of security that is essential for social life
as well as for economic expansion? I wish the dialogue about change
would take more note of the diverse issues that have to be addressed
and not just of changing those who sit in office.
The central question is: what kind of a West Bengal do we want?
Q: Do you think India would be ready to take some tough, even
unpleasant, decisions to sustain its rate of economic growth?
A: I’m not a great believer of unpleasantness being a way for high
growth rate or for economic development in general. I think economic
development is not like fighting a world war. Churchill may have been
right to promise nothing other than “blood, sweat and tears”, but
bloodshed and tears are not very effective ingredients of economic
development. Indeed, in that reading lies a huge possibility of
counterproductive policies. In the past, this approach has been used
to say “let’s think of democracy later but we must have economic
development earlier”, which is a completely unsound reasoning. Without
democracy, you’re not in a position to make sure that the underdogs
who have been neglected get the attention they deserve. We might,
through good luck, get a ruler who is very good, like Akbar, or we
might get a ruler who is very far from good, and then we get a
terrible policy. Akbar or Asoka was not controlled by democracy, but
we were lucky to have emperors like that at that time — but we can’t
rely on luck. So we do want a systematic influence on the priorities
of governance, through democracy, particularly in the form — I discuss
that idea in my book The Idea of Justice — of “governance by
discussion”. Similarly, it has often been said that you cannot remove
poverty until the time when there is a huge amount of national wealth
and prosperity. This is ridiculous because the poor are living their
lives right now, rather than waiting to live a life in the future, and
a lot of things can be done for them here and now. So we have to think
about how to make human lives better with more freedom and well-being
— right now, as well as in the future.
So I don’t think “blood, sweat and tears” are very high contributors
to economic good. But your question is still sensible, because
sometimes decisions have to be taken that may be unpleasant to some.
Even though the demands may sometimes come from a small section of the
community, and they may be against the interests of others and of
poorer people, those demands may be hard to resist if the small group
demanding them happens to be very powerful. You may then have to stand
up against them. Quite a lot of policies of subsidising commodities,
which are used by the rich rather than the poor, have played their
part in generating pressure groups that are very active.
The basic question to ask is not how to take an unpleasant decision,
but how to take a good decision. And if the good decision turns out to
be unpleasant for some part of the community, which is small but
powerful, and if that makes those good policies unpleasant for the
government to execute, well then, you have to have the courage to take
unpleasant decisions of that kind. However, the general cultivation of
militarist unpleasantness is not a part of my understanding of
economic development at all.
WHAT SEN SAID
On Manmohan
The role of India in the world is something, I do know, worries
Manmohan, and he will welcome the fact that India seems to have a much
better reception in the world now as a global actor
On climate
Wanting a global contract that is fairer to the interests of the
poorer parts of the world… is appropriate. But then to say that there
is no contract we will ever sign if it’s binding seems to me to assume
that we have an exemption from our global citizenship role...
On bengal
It is time for the population of Bengal to rethink where they are
actually going. Simply to say ‘we want change: full stop!’ is not
itself a very articulate view