The issue is if Sen’s policy prescriptions will ameliorate shortfalls in social indicators or accentuate them, says Bhagwati
First Published: Tue, Jul 23 2013. 04 26 PM IST
In a brilliant article on Bhagwati versus Sen published in Mint on
10 July, Niranjan Rajadhyaksha unwittingly took one step in the wrong
direction in arguing that I could be the economist for Narendra Modi and
my good friend Amartya Sen for Rahul Gandhi. Let me explain.
First, I have argued (with Arvind Panagariya) that
Gujarat has produced growth and also that the change in its social
indicators is remarkable, whereas Kerala is by no means the great model
of development that Sen has long extolled for its “redistribution” under
the communist regimes, and that Bangladesh to which Sen has now turned
is also no paragon of virtue. I refer the reader to the new
Bhagwati-Panagariya book, referenced below, where Sen’s assertions are
pretty well demolished with evidence and argumentation. Amusingly, now
he has even turned in The New York Times to China, which he used to excoriate us for being “obsessed with”: but that will not survive scrutiny either.
I also believe that the Gujarat template is ideal: its
people believe in accumulating wealth but they believe also in using it,
not for self-indulgence but for social good. This comes from the
Vaishnav and Jain traditions that Gandhiji drew upon as well. The best
“foreign” model of this type is exemplified by my most distinguished
Columbia University colleague, Simon Schama, who wrote about the Dutch
burghers who had similar values and lifestyles. It is also a great model
for India, I believe.
Second, the notion that I am for growth per se whereas
Sen is instead for poverty reduction and “social progress” reflects
ignorance. Not merely did I spend my early 1960s in the Planning
Commission, working on poverty reduction, but Sen showed at the time no
particular concern for that issue. Besides, in the early 1970s, when
gender issues were not fashionable, I produced an influential paper in
1973 in the Oxford journal World Development, showing how female
children were being neglected in education and nutrition. Padma Desai
and I also worked through several Indian elections to show how women
candidates were few and far between, and that the Left-wing parties were
surprisingly not better at fielding female candidates. I also gave the
Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Lecture on the importance of democracy (a theme
that is integrated more pointedly into the analysis of Indian
development in the Bhagwati-Panagariya book).
Sen has caught up with such issues only later and is
sometimes described as the Mother Teresa of economics. But she did a lot
of good at the micro level, whereas (as I discuss below) his policy
prescriptions have done huge damage instead. Let us not insult Mother
Teresa.
Let me then focus on the issue of growth and
redistribution in relation to India’s policy framework. As Panagariya
and I have documented at great length in our book—India’s Tryst with Destiny, from Collins in December, and retitled Why Growth Matters
in the US/international edition from PublicAffairs in April—significant
redistribution in India could not have preceded growth as there were
too few rich and too many poor. Growth, therefore, would not merely pull
people above the poverty line but it would have the added beneficial
effect that it would generate revenues which could then be used to
undertake redistribution. I had noted these two points in my Vikram
Sarabhai Memorial Lecture on poverty and public policy in Ahmedabad
almost 25 years ago, also writing that added incomes earned by the poor
need not necessarily translate into improved nutrition, for example, and
that education was necessary to nudge people into making good choices.
Sen, with no evidence and with only wishful thinking to
support his assertions, claims instead, and is at least construed by
many to be arguing, that redistribution should precede growth whereas I
(and Panagariya) believe that it is the other way around. As we clarify
the matter again, for the umpteenth time, in our Letter to the Editor of
The Economist in the 10 July issue, Sen puts the cart before the horse; and the cart is a dilapidated jalopy!
(Sen, in a reply last week in a letter to The Economist,
takes me to task for “unilateral” attacks on him. This is strange.
Intellectuals write for the public as John Maynard Keynes did, instead
of seeking prior, bilateral agreement! We act individually according to
our lights; we expect informed debates to settle the differences. He
also claims that he embraces growth. But in our book, I and Panagariya
quote him extensively to show that this is pro forma, at best, much like
an anti-Semite would claim that Jews are among his best friends! To
take just a single example out of the many we have recorded, he has
attacked the Indian press for concentrating on issues such as foreign
direct investment, which is growth-enhancing, and neglecting coverage of
the poor.)
Sen is not simply wrong; he also poses a serious danger
to economic policy in India. Indeed, having opposed implicitly or
explicitly the liberal reforms that, starting vigorously in 1991,
transformed the Indian economy and pulled it out of its abysmal growth
rate, and pulled millions above the poverty line, Sen had suffered the
misfortune of having seen Indian policy and economy pass him by. Now, he
seeks to resurrect himself by endorsing programmes such as the National
Food Security Bill, or NFSB, (which, of course, predates Sen’s
endorsement by a long shot) which promise substantial “redistribution”.
But, for reasons discussed by many (such as Panagariya
and Arvind Subramanian among them), therein lies, not glory, but yet
another disaster that will make Sen the only well-known economist to
have inflicted damage twice on Indian policy and therewith on poverty
reduction: first, by supporting the counterproductive policies that
undermined growth prior to the 1991 reforms and now, by supporting
populist measures such as NFSB that would deal a blow yet again against
the poor (as I explain below). The road to hell is indeed paved with
good intentions.
There are four additional points that the reader should
keep in mind. First, Sen seems to think that I am bursting to debate
him. Frankly, I am not. It was N.P. Ullekh of The Economic Times who
asked me why Sen would not debate with me the differences we have. So, I
replied that he should ask Sen that, not me. Now Sen says that I want
to debate him but he will not debate me. So much, of course, from Sen
who has conned foreigners into believing that Indians believe in debates
that lead to an informed democracy. As it happens, Indians
traditionally are more into falling at the feet of great figures like
Sen and me. Alternatively, they indulge in personal attacks like
musicians who describe singers from other kiranas as “dhobis”! As I once remarked jokingly, we Indians are so ingenious that we multiply by dividing!
Sen has so far dodged any invitation to argue face to
face with those who disagree with his assertions. He indirectly
responded to my Lok Sabha speech some time ago, which may have annoyed
him as it had an unprecedented response in the country, unlike his own,
by telling the Financial Times that concern with growth was
“stupid”. On an NDTV panel on NFSB, where Panagariya unexpectedly turned
up to oppose him, he lost his cool and said that Panagariya could not
speak on NFSB issues as he lived in New York, to which Panagariya calmly
responded that Sen lived in Cambridge! He was flooded with emails
saying he was a hero to have brought Sen down a peg.
It is this tendency to degenerate into personal attacks
as against debates on issues that we need to avoid. On the same
programme, Sen’s friend, the activist Jean Drèze, produced some toy
animals and told Panagariya that he was a unicorn! He is lucky that
Panagariya did not respond bitingly and say that Drèze should have
described himself as the Nandi bull, with his senior colleague Sen as
Lord Shiva who had hurt masses of India’s poor. But is this what Sen
wants us to do rather than debate issues in a professional way?
Second, it is simply untrue that my policy prescriptions
would be unacceptable to Rahul Gandhi or, in fact, any political leader
who cares for social progress and poverty amelioration. If they are
going to spend money on health, education, etc., they will have to find
the moneys to finance them. Uncle Sam has no money to give; and God is
asleep at the switch and not inclined to drop manna from heaven. Unless
they want to hear Sen’s soothing but irresponsible reassurances on
behalf of populism, they will have no option except to read and
implement the reform programmes that we have advocated in the
Bhagwati-Panagariya book for both intensifying and broadening the
growth-inducing reforms we call track I reforms and also cleaning out
and improving the revenue-spending programmes for health, education and
public distribution system (PDS) that we call track II reforms.
Third, Sen keeps describing India’s shortfalls on social
indicators, as if Indian planners and intellectuals were blind to them.
The real issue is whether his prescriptions will ameliorate these
shortfalls or accentuate them. Here, he fails us. And his flawed
exaggerations of India’s failures on nutrition, successfully challenged
by Panagariya, also leave him as a misguided analyst.
Finally , the United Progressive Alliance government is
now poised to damage the economy, and to harm the poor as in the
pre-1991-reforms years, because its near-paralysis on track I reforms
has meant that revenue growth has slowed too, making it more difficult
to finance the track II reforms on health, education and PDS expansion
for the poor. At the same time, owing to electoral pressures and with
the populist rationales provided by the likes of Sen, the expenditures
on such track II policies are set to go up this year. So, we have a
disjunction between slowing revenue growth and rising track II
expenditures. This will mean inflation for sure: and this will
definitely hurt the poor (many econometric studies have shown that the
poor are hurt by inflation) while likely leading to a return of
intervention in the food market, etc., that will likely undermine the
earlier track I reforms in turn.
Surely, it is time for all politicians, especially the
progressive ones regardless of which political party they belong to, to
therefore finally stand up and say: enough is enough! May I urge at
least the Prime Minister, a close friend whom I have known intimately
for almost 60 years from our Cambridge days and is a proud architect of
the 1991 track I reforms that I among others advocated for years and
which have now turned us around, to finally abandon his silence and say
to Sen and his friends publicly: “You are wrong”?
Jagdish Bhagwati is university professor of law and economics at Columbia University.
Source: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/9Qzg05zypjEUbioqK9N1UM/Why-Amartya-Sen-is-wrong.html
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