New Delhi:
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen tells NDTV that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's model of economic development can co-exist and should be welcomed as much as Congress's focus on welfare for the
aam aadmi.
Here is the full transcript of Prof Sen's interview with NDTV:
NDTV: Hello and welcome. It's a landmark bill which, if passed, could change one of our worst India stories - the fact that men, women and children just don't get enough to eat. We look at why Parliament can't function to discuss this bill, let alone pass it. The entire India story and the battle between two models of development, I will discuss with Professor Amartya Sen. Prof Amartya Sen, it's a time when growth and development have become buzzwords even in election campaigns and two models of growth that people talk about now - there is a Narendra Modi model mantra really of 'maximum governance-minimum government' and that what many see as Sonia Gandhi-Rahul Gandhi model of a welfare state, or some would say a handout state which includes what the UPA's landmark Right to Food Security Bill is seen as part of. How would you compare the two models of growth and development?
Amartya Sen: To think only in terms of these two models is itself a mistake. You know, I think the big story that's in the economic development in the world and particularly, in Asia, is the feature of what we call the Asian model of development. In Asia, it developed in 1860s; Japan putting the emphasis on making the country fully literate, educated, providing health care, providing nutritional support in a way that people are able to work and be productive. That's the model that took the Japanese forward along with the intelligent policies about trade and exchange and making use of the world market and, as well as making use of the high capability of the labour of the Japanese cultivated by the state. Korea, South Korea, did the same. Taiwan did the same, Hong Kong, Singapore did it excellently too, but in another way. Thailand, to a great extent, did the same thing. And after China did the vacillation from the Maoist period after a few wrong steps, particularly taking the wrong step on health care by privatising it and by privatising insurance, went back to the model of state taking responsibility. To describe it as a handout state, welfare state is a gigantic mistake. It's the way in which you make human beings capable and that is central to any economic expansion. Now in a slower way, USA had done it in over 100 years, Asia did in a telescopic way and China, of course, in three decades has moved from a fairly poor country to no longer that. For example, we spend 1.2% on health care; the Chinese spent 2.7% of GDP on health care, more than twice in relative terms, not to mention absolute, because their income is higher, so they pay absolutely five times on health care. So making people well-nourished is of course very big part of well-being. But there is nothing against welfare if on ground that is just welfare. First of all it is not just welfare. Even if it had been, there might have been a small case for it, but it happens and that is a big fruit is that the entire lesson of the Asian economic development, which is to simultaneously pursue growth and human development, has been missed out in India in one form or the other.
NDTV: Much of the opposition said the Food Security Bill has come from the fact that people point to that 'look we have reforms, India has a growth rate that is talked about all over the world, yet we couldn't manage to feed these children.' So we need a completely different model and, in that sense, if we don't have a delivery system right, how will the Food Security Bill actually work?
Amartya Sen: Yes, they have to say I am on the pro-growth side. I think growth is very good for feeding the children. If we fail, it is not because we were having the high rate of growth, public revenue, when it went more than four times as to what it was 20 years ago. It's just whether we are able to allocate enough as the Chinese had, the Koreans had, the Japanese had and Taiwanese had. And Thais had to develop human well-being as well as human capability. If we fail, it's not because we had high growth rate. We failed because we didn't supplement. Now the Food Security Bill, it had many defects, but certainly in our country, there is a big story, it is in a way a strong step in the right direction. I mean there are many ways of making people better fed, getting employment; the rural employment guarantee scheme is also a nutritional scheme, but it's not a directly nutritional scheme in the way the Food Security Bill is. So there is every reason to welcome it. You mentioned the two stories, Narendra Modi I take it you are thinking of the BJP, but I would like to state that the State that's done well on food security is Chhattisgarh, which is run by a BJP-run government. So I think when this bill is debated in Parliament, I don't doubt it will pass. The question is, at the moment, since the nature of Indian divisive politics is such that one thing that we can be proud of in the democracy of India is that when it's been threatened, where Parliament can't sit in a session, can't pass a thing, we can't discuss anything, whether it is Sarabjit Singh, you know to what happened in Pakistan, to anything else, in the full Parliament we have to have that voice as heard. Now Bangladesh has done a lot of good things and made good progress in nutrition. They have better nutrition than we have in females... the female justice and gender justice and equity. On the other hand, where we are failing is the Opposition that doesn't like to sit in the Parliament when the other party is ruling. Now, nevertheless, they have single-handedly carried out because they carried with the majority party. Well given the Indian democracy, we don't want to do that and therefore, we have to find the system where the different parties work together, and since this is the subject about kids being better, nice, better-fed, expanding India's growth potential for dramatically, which I believe that I made this agreement with one political party or another. I don't see a real opposition coming on this side. The less coming the side of not meeting. That is the real denial of the democracy. At the moment, we are dealing with the issues of support for democracy, support for nourishment, support for economic growth, all on the same side and that is really why I think that pushing through the Food Security Bill right now is a very important step to take.
NDTV: Do you find it ironic that the bills or issues that dominate India's polity are usually whether it's a nuclear deal or whether it's FDI in multi-brand retail, seem at the end of the day to affect a very small proportion of people? Even at the end of the day, we never discuss issues like over 50% of India being malnourished. Why do you think these are being made irrelevant in the outraged India of today?
Amartya Sen: Well, I think there are three things to say about that Sonia, and like your other question, it is an extremely pertinent question. One is that basically the public discussion and to some extent, not the bulk of the media, not actually all of it, the bulk of it is really involved in the lives of relatively rich, the shine and the glitter is also primarily upper class glitter that gets a lot of attention. No harm in that if you cover other things too. When you talk about deprivation, you talk of the relatively poor of the relatively rich like the bottom 20% of the top 20%. Now you know when you're agitating about power subsidy, for example, which is about 2% of the GDP, the proportion that will go into the Food Security Bill is a tiny fraction of that. Now, similarly, we don't, you know, gold and jewelry exhibition, you know that may be Rs 60,000 crore compared with the Rs 27,000 crore for the Food Security Bill, but the government tried to do something on that and then it failed. It had to withdraw because there was so much opposition from home, from the stricken poor, the stricken poor who can buy jewellery, who have diesel cars which they can use, who want lower price LPG because their equipment with LPG will be attacked, you're not talking about the masses then. So I think the real difficulty is, the question sometimes raised about
aam aadmi, that people are acting in the name of
aam aadmi, but have to diagnose the
aam aadmi correctly. The
aam aadmi is not concerned with the price of gas for which they don't have any equipment to fit it in, the
aam aadmi is not concerned with the price of diesel, because they haven't got any equipment with which they can use diesel. So, I think the focal issue has shifted. That's one. Secondly, given the nature of opposition politics, the moment something happens, you do something. It happened with the employment guarantee scheme and some people even today don't recognise that the employment guarantee scheme had achieved a lot and sometimes even say that government did it for vote-getting. But if it did produce votes in a democracy that's not something shameful to have, that's what democracy is about. It's about free speech, public discussion, free debate, ultimately votes. Now if it is the case that a lot of people support it, that itself is a recommendation, and we have all kinds of evidence to indicate that roadways are finishing on India, July 15 will show how it had made a transformation, including the rural for example. So in some way, the nature of the Opposition party takes the debate away, so that's the second reason. And the third is the food security which is, in a sense, if you discuss it properly, there are very few people in India who'll say 'look, children's nourishment is not important' or very few people would deny that good nutrition is important for economic development. There is a loss of rhetoric there and we discussed that when India began its development, Jamshedji Tata, more than a 100 years ago, in what we now call Jamshedpur. His immediate resolve is 'not only do I have to put up a factory, I have to start a municipality. I have to provide free education, free health care to ensure that people are educated, healthy', because that's the way the industry could succeed. That sight, which is very much the Asian economic development sight, was clearly present in the pioneering industrialists in India. In the process of the nature of the politics today, it's a great extent loss and the divisive nature of our politics, I mean, I believe in party politics, I don't believe we should have one party state like China, we do have multi-party politics, but each party has to take responsibility to not only pursue its own call, which is understandable, but at the same time support those things and allow discussions on those things which makes the lives of children, lives of Indians enormously better.
NDTV: You talked about Gujarat and of course in current Indian politics, the man who is often pitched with many people voicing the need for strong leadership. Narendra Modi seems to fill that gap for many people, especially because he talks development. He is focusing very much on development, he cites what is happening in Gujarat as an example and you have seen India's corporates and many others line up to felicitate him and say India needs a leader like Narendra Modi. Do you support the Narendra Modi idea of development?
Amartya Sen: The fact that he emphasises development is a very positive thing, especially for a party which could have also pursued religious divisiveness and Mr Modi himself had done that in its history. But the fact that at the moment he is very keen on development, that we must welcome. The fact that some parts of development like building base for power, the power sector, about road transport and so on, that is very much welcome. At the same time, if you look at education, if you look at health, if you look at condition of women and gender inequality, Gujarat's record is not very good. Gujarat's growth rate has been high, not exceptionally high as before and not next to neighbor; Gujarat was 8.2%, Maharashtra was 8.1%. There is not a sea difference between the two. I think there is, a lot of it is hype and some of it sensible, in the sense that we should support. The hype bit we have to resist.
NDTV: You mentioned the riots as against Narendra Modi but, of course, we are currently facing the outrage over the delay in justice for the victims of the 1984 Sikh riots. People pointed the fact that between the two majors has there been any difference of how they have actually dealt with riots, and also the whole political ramification around the word inclusive development, which kind of replaces human development. It's almost saying that the Congress offers secular inclusive development, Narendra Modi doesn't. Do you think that's the fair argument given as I said...
Amartya Sen: I won't comment on that because I haven't followed that argument. It's certainly great on part of the ruling government and that time it was a Congress government. That the anti-Sikh riots took place after Mrs.Gandhi's assassination, that is certainly not in credit of the ruling party. And I think we have to judge each of them as cases of violation. When they are, that does not justify in any way what happened in Gujarat because the entire premise that there was a certain amount of not only looking the other way, but might have been even certain amount of complicity on the part of many people in position of power. Obviously, these are matters sub-judice and I don't want to comment on that. But these are the issues to discuss if that's indeed the case and so, how to penalise it as far as anti-Sikh riots are concerned. I have been vocal on that for a very long time, for many decades, but I think yes, well I think justice was not obtained. There is not at all to any party glory to obtain. So I think they both have done terrible things. The question is how to avoid it, but if there is one party which at one stage looked at that, they have a real reliance on a sectarian agenda and carrying out such thing as, as the round table agitation, then there is a volition reason thinking on it which the Indian public has reason to reject, and indeed it did reject. And there was not a similar attempt to create an anti-Sikh sense and exactly what happened was absolutely dreadful and should have been prevented. But there was not an evasion, it's not that a political party proceeded from then to build up an anti-Sikh position and pursue a policy. So I think we have to judge incident and incident and incident, the bad, bad ones that we criticise, we have to have policies to be pursued. Is it Hindutva-based or rather now a sectarian view or is it not? And if to that extent the Hindutva agenda is replaced by the development agenda, we have to welcome that too. And at the same time, if these things that the development is being thought of too narrowly, we have to point out, rather than being sheer leaders of that, to say 'look, that is the narrow view of development, you have a right view of development', but for that you need more education, healthcare, immunisation and so on. And these are extremely important things in which Gujarat's record, alas, is not very good. And it's not that the Congress has done very well and I mean in that the leadership of that came from the Communist party in Kerala. Now the Communists actually at the moment seem to have joined and is mainly looking for relatively poor among relatively rich, in agitating about diesel prices, LPG and so on. But the fact is they can claim a lot of credit for it but they don't so much claim credit from it. I think it's a question of I think being partisan, it's not a very good way of looking at India's solution. India has many parties and it should be proud to have those parties, each of these party leaders are capable of reasoning. BJP's own transformation to that extent, it's a tribute to that. So I think we have to be more reasonable to more facts into the story, and that's one of the reasons why the colleagues are together finishing a book on India, a very effective book and we are depressed by the fact that the table run for 60 pages or so and we analyse from them. What's the lesson? What do we understand from it? If I take to believe that Indian public has reason, I don't think I would have tried. I don't think there is any reason to think that's the case again and again. Whether it is rejection of emergency, whether it is rejection of completely useless License Raj, whether it is the rejection of policy of no school expansion and very little primary education, was completely downgraded in first five- year plan, we have moved out of that through reasoning. And I think with other problems we have moved out of that too. Not by saying which party is better, but by trying to construct an agenda which analyses, in terms of the nature of the policies, and the problems we have today. The problem and the policies that we can do in response and what is the, what are the important lessons that the world has started to learn from it, across the other country, other countries as well as within the countries. If there is something to learn from Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, if so what not to say that it's high growth and everything else has happened, overlooking how come high growth actually took place. I think we have reasons to pursue an approach which gives time to recent arguments, to one honouring another political party.
NDTV: Prof Sen, our political leadership is listening, thank you so much for joining me this evening, thank you.