Amartya Sen vs Jagdish Bhagwati: When Intellectual Heavyweights Hit Below the Belt!

July 13th, 2013 at  letters(a)economist.com 

SIR-We read your review of “An Uncertain Glory”, the latest book on India by Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze. The review approvingly cites us as advocating faster growth through labour and land market reforms to cut poverty yet more deeply and to generate more revenues for social programmes. But your claim that Messrs Sen and Drèze wish to go “much further” leaves us puzzled. 

The truth of the matter is that Mr Sen has belatedly learned to give lip service to growth, which he has long excoriated as a fetish. He did not explicitly advocate any pro-growth policies, such as opening India to trade and to direct foreign investment, in practice before or after the 1991 reforms. Nor does he recognise that significant redistribution to the poor without growth is not a feasible policy.

Instead he continues to assert that redistribution has led to rapid growth in Asia, a proposition that has no basis in reality and puts the cart before the horse. Growth has made redistribution feasible, not the other way round. 

Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati

Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya      

Professors of economics
Columbia University
New York

Sen's reply came on July 20, 2012 at the same space: 

SIR – In complaining about your generous review of “An Uncertain Glory”, which I wrote with Jean Drèze, Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya have misdescribed my past work as well as the book itself . I have resisted responding to Mr Bhagwati’s persistent, and unilateral, attacks in the past, but this outrageous distortion needs correction.

Their letter says that, “Mr Sen has belatedly learned to give lip service to growth.” On the contrary, the importance of economic growth as a means— not an end—has been one of the themes even in my earliest writings (including “Choice of Techniques” in 1960 and “Growth Economics” in 1970). The power of growth-mediated security outlined in another book I co-authored with Mr Drèze in 1989, “Hunger and Public Action”, is a big theme in the present book.

Economic growth is very important as a means for bettering people’s lives, but “to go much further, faster” (as your reviewer commented) it has to be combined with devoting resources to remove illiteracy, ill health, undernutrition and other deprivations. This is not to be confused with mere “redistribution” of incomes, on which Messrs Bhagwati and Panagariya choose to concentrate.

The understanding, which is central to our book, that economic growth is greatly helped by early public support for the education and health of the people draws on positive experiences from Japan, China, Korea, Singapore and many other countries. It can scarcely be like putting “the cart before the horse”.

Amartya Sen,

Prof. Amartya Sen

    

Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

The exchange of letters cited above took place at The Economist.

On August 26, 2013, four personalities wrote "getting the facts right" on The Hindu, one of the most reputed newspapers in Delhi on the ongoing 'quarrel". The article chided Bhagwati for hitting below the belt!

Free speech and dignified debate are an integral part of democratic functioning. Therefore we cannot but be concerned about the plummeting standards of intellectual debate as evidenced in Jagdish Bhagwati’s personal attacks on Amartya Sen in the Indian media. Not only are Mr. Bhagwati’s attacks offensive and abusive, they are also factually incorrect. 

We are indeed surprised by the misinformation in Mr. Bhagwati’s recent articles on Mr. Sen. Mr. Bhagwati charges that Mr. Sen appointed himself Chancellor of Nalanda University. This is patently false, as Nalanda University is a cooperative initiative involving several Asian governments, and India’s then President Pratibha Patil, as Visitor to Nalanda University, was the responsible authority for the appointment of the Chancellor. Amartya Sen was requested by President Patil to undertake the role as Chancellor without remuneration which he did because of his commitment to the vision of Nalanda University, an invaluable intellectual heritage for India, indeed for the world. 

Mr. Bhagwati’s claim that Mr. Sen “asked for and accepted a million dollars from BJP Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha for his new NGO, whereas I have not asked for a Rupee or received any financing from the BJP” is false. When Mr. Sen got the Nobel Prize and used his prize money to set up a Trust to conduct policy research on education and health in India (he set up a similar charitable Trust in Bangladesh), the Government of India volunteered a matching contribution to the Trust, in appreciation of Mr. Sen’s achievement and commitment. Mr. Sen neither requested nor received a million dollars. Accepting a celebratory gesture in support of a charitable Trust from your own government (Mr. Sen remains an Indian citizen) is not the same as getting a grant from a political party. His commitment to advancing children’s health and education in India has continued, and indeed his royalties from the book that Bhagwati attacks (An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions) are going wholly to the same charitable Trust. 

Also, it is incorrect to say, as Mr. Bhagwati does, that “Mr Sen gratuitously attacked Chief Minister Narendra Modi.” Mr. Sen spoke about Mr. Modi in response only to pointed questions in a television interview. Surely in a democracy Mr. Sen has a right to his views and a right to reply truthfully in a media interview.

Again, Mr. Sen has never denounced the “provision by the private sector” of arrangements for the delivery of “food, education and health” to the deprived. He has never said — let alone “insisted” — that “the government alone must provide them,” as Mr. Bhagwati claims. 

As concerned citizens of India, we write this letter because erroneous charges should be corrected for the public record. We also appeal for a commitment to truth, a respect for facts, and the use of temperate language in anyone seeking to engage responsibly in a public debate. Presenting untrue statements in support of false accusations vitiates the practice of democracy. 

Somnath Chatterjee, A seasoned Parliamentarian

 N. Ram, Chief Editor of The Hindu

Sudhir Anand, an Economist teaching at Harvard/Oxford

 A.K. Shiva Kumar, an Economist teaching at Harvard/member of National Advisory Council, India.

The topic of debate between the two figures is, I think, very important. And I also think both of them are not really totally negating growth or the welfare of the poor; it's just about the need to emphasize at a particular point of time. After all without growth, there is no money to provide cheap education or healthcare. Yet what good is growth if 50% of the population is illiterate or hungry? I think the contention is about whether government needs to emphasize more at present.

And in this debate I sit on the side of Amartya Sen. I don't think that unless the government takes serious measure to promote healthcare or education, the economy won't just trickle down to, say, the North East. The North East as such has been not at all at par with the mainstream Indian economy in term of growth, let alone on social sector. Even few months back, the President of India says to this effect in his visit to the North East. A society that is becoming more individualistic and where age old social bond is disintegrating;  where people are just vying to get on top of the others, there is no one to care for the child begging on the street. Considering the social reality I think government should invest more on healthcare and education that what it is doing now.