Economic Graffiti: The anti-argumentative Indian

More disappointing than the attacks on Amartya Sen is that leaders in government have not countered the chant of abusive trolls.

Amartya Sen is an iconic world figure. In that treacherous space between economics and philosophy, he may well be the most famous living personality, having published papers in the world’s best philosophy journals and the most highly-regarded economics journals. When he got the Nobel Prize for economics in 1998, it did not come as a surprise to anyone in the profession. I have a confession though. That year, I was visiting the World Bank and there was a Nobel lottery among the staff. Having taken a bet on Sen the previous two year’s and lost, I decided it was time to change my guess. And I lost my money again.

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I was fortunate to do my PhD with Amartya Sen. In fact, it was his lectures at the London School of Economics in the mid-1970s in jam-packed auditoriums, with students spilling over on to window sills, that made me change my life-long career plan to be a lawyer.

I first met Sen, fleetingly, in Delhi, when I was a student at St Stephen’s College, and he was a professor at the Delhi School of Economics. But I got to know him properly in London in 1972 when I joined the London School. I did my PhD with him, when he was at the height of his career, working mainly on social choice theory, mathematical logic and moral philosophy.

There is no surprise, then, that Sen has been a major influence on me, and that I often cite his works in my writings. What has been a shocking experience in the last three or four years is the amount of trolling attacks unleashed on Sen whenever he is cited in popular writings; these come almost entirely from India. The attacks do not have any substance. Clearly, those crafting the attacks, if crafting is the word, do not have the capacity for serious debate. So what they unleash is merely a volley of completely fact-free name calling. Sen, they scream, is an agent of the Congress party, he is a slave of the West, a brainless puppet and they go on, using language so crude that it is not worth repeating.

What is sad for India is not that a few people may want to shout invectives at him, but that the leaders in government have not said anything to counter this crazy chant of abusive trolls.

I am not saying that the trolling should be banned. People should have the freedom to express their opinions no matter how inchoate, but we need leaders, even those who oppose Sen’s views, to signal their disapproval of this kind of uncouth character assassination directed at one of the most celebrated intellectuals of our time.

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I have known Sen long enough to know not just about his outstanding mind, but that he is totally without prejudice against groups — caste, religion, race. Like Nehru was, he is an atheist, who respects other people’s religion; he is totally secular.

Though Sen has openly said that he does not support the present BJP government, he belongs to no party. In fact, the only time he has been a member of any political party, it was that of the left, when he was an undergraduate student in India, at Kolkata’s Presidency College.

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What is ironic about these politically-inspired attacks on Sen is that they come from the very Hindutva groups that are perennially pointing out how Indians do not recognise the contributions of Indians to science, philosophy and scholarship. What they do not realise is that whether or not that has been true historically, their behaviour provides evidence in favour of their own thesis.

Not for a moment would I say that Sen’s ideas must not be challenged, contested and rejected if one is so persuaded. It is through arguments and contestation that democracy thrives. These troll attacks on Sen are unfortunate because they are attacks on the very matters on which India, despite being a poor country, stood out and commanded respect around the world. It is a tribute to Nehru and his self-confidence that he nurtured scientists, philosophers and intellectuals, including those who were openly critical of Nehru’s politics.

If I take my own field, economics, it is a remarkable fact that there are few nations outside America and Europe that are so well represented in the frontline as India. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the talent that came out of India was quite astonishing. There was, of course, Amartya Sen but even apart from him it was a string of personalities who started out in India and were doing cutting-edge research in economics. K N Raj, Jagdish Bhagwati, Sukhamoy Chakravarty, T N Srinivasan, A L Nagar, and if we were to go to a slightly younger cohort, Avinash Dixit and Partha Dasgupta stand out among them.

For a nation’s progress, nothing is as important as the nurturing of science, philosophy, literature, and mathematics. Economics is a relatively young science that is now critical for a nation to navigate today’s complicated, globalised world. And in assessing the power of ideas, we must realise that ideas must be assessed for their own worth. Doomed are societies in which people, after hearing about Pythagoras’ theorem, want to know Pythagoras’ political party affiliation in order to decide whether the theorem is correct.

Source: Indian Express, 14/12/2018

Amartya Sen: The President should be a voice for sanity and fairness

A strong President can inspire us to stand up for all sections of the people, says Amartya Sen

The President of India has an elevated standing as head of the Republic, and should be a voice for sanity and fairness, says Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate and economist. In the run-up to the presidential election, he answered questions via email on the role of the President in a secular and federal democracy. An enlightened President has many things to do, but being a ‘rubber stamp’ is not one of them, he says. Excerpts from the interview:

President Pranab Mukherjee’s term ends soon. Given that the President has only a formal, titular role, is it better to look for a candidate outside the realm of active politics? Is opening up the position for writers, artists, public intellectuals and so on more desirable?

The President of India has an enormously important role in the leadership of the country. This is not only because of the particularly assigned duties of the President in special circumstances, as in a political crisis of governance, but also because of the elevated standing of the head of the Republic in motivating and inspiring the secular democracy of India, guided by the Constitution.

While a number of statesmen and politicians have played that role with distinction, going back to Rajendra Prasad (the first President of India), leaders of thought from other walks of life — including Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Zakir Husain, and K.R. Narayanan (among others) — have also, by their prominent presence and stature, helped to lead India to remain faithful to itself — reminding the country of the vision of fairness that gave birth to democratic and secular India after its long and hard fight for independence.

At a time when sections of society are apprehensive about the secular credentials of the government at the Centre and there is criticism from abroad that religious freedom is under threat, what should be the role of the President in guiding the government and its policy? Should the President be activist by nature, or confine herself to the customary, constitutional role as a titular head of state?

There are indeed serious reasons for concerns and apprehensions right now, based on observing the violations of human rights and of traditional protections that are going on in the country. The targeted victims come typically from vulnerable sections of the society — from minority communities (particularly the poorer Muslims), Dalits and tribal people. The President has potentially a hugely important role in insisting on fair treatment of all the people in the country and the immediate stopping of what The New York Timeshas alarmingly described, in its widely-read lead editorial of the day, “vigilante justice in India.” The recognition that India’s image as a successful democratic country has dramatically declined across the world may be a minor concern (even though it does worry many Indians, and should have worried the Government of India as well), but the violations and wrongdoings themselves have reason to agitate all fair-minded people in India, whether they are themselves targeted or not. The President can be not only the face of India, but also a great voice for sanity and fairness.

What sort of candidate would you endorse? Will you prefer someone with an independent mind, someone who will not be a ‘rubber stamp’, or someone who will take a strict, constructionist view of the Constitution and abide by its letter?

Accountants need rubber stamps — a country does not. The President not only has to exercise his or her own judgment, and to recognise that within the provisions of the Indian Constitution, he or she has a much bigger role than simply rubber-stamping decisions taken by others. A President can be quite tough — and ultimately effective — in asking the government to reconsider its priorities, especially when rights and fair treatment of countrymen are threatened, and also — to take another area of serious transgressions — when education, science and freedom of thought are undermined. There were very illuminating — and quite long — discussions in the Constituent Assembly on why certain provisions and articulations were necessary to stop the continuation of old injustices and the avoidance of new inequities. That background is extremely important in interpreting not only the nastiness of what are increasingly becoming the new rules of governance in India, but also for the determination to pursue equity to which the Indian Constitution made such an important contribution. An enlightened and strong President will have many things to do — being a rubber stamp is not one of them.

Given that the electoral college for electing the President of India is drawn partly from the State Assemblies, the President’s office has a federal character. Doesn’t this place an onus on the President to defend the rights of States? In practice, Presidents are often asked to endorse decisions adverse to State governments: for instance, imposition of Article 356 and appointment of Governors without consulting Chief Ministers. What should the role of the President be in such situations?

You are absolutely right that the President of India has a natural role in ensuring India’s constitutional federalism. When dictates of the Centre run counter to the legitimate rights and the traditional spheres of the States, the President certainly has a protective role that cannot be obliterated by the commands of the Centre. It would be absurd for the President to be guided only by the orders of the Centre when the Centre is itself an interested party.

What qualities should a President have?

The election of a President involves practical politics, but there are issues that go well beyond that. In building our future, we have to be careful not to shed the strength we have got from our past. Rabindranath Tagore wanted us to fight for freedom for all, with reason and determination. Mahatma Gandhi taught India the importance of public protest whenever we face inequities and unfair treatment of vulnerable people (by the way, among the names suggested in the papers, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the Mahatma’s grandson, would be an excellent standard-bearer, given his knowledge, experience and wisdom). The President of India should fit into this broad, non-sectarian picture, inspired by the history of our fearless and shared movement for independence (a history that some leading politicians in India seem to have forgotten). Within his or her constitutional as well as evocative roles, a strong President can make a major contribution in inspiring us to stand up for fairness for all sections of the people. If we do not ask anything from our President except being a rubber stamp, we are very likely to get nothing more than a decorated rubber stamp.

Source: The Hindu, 6-06-2017

Amartya Sen errs on Modi

Criticism of the Modi government while sparing erstwhile Congress-ruled governments does little for Sen’s stature

Amartya Sen is back in town. As usual, when he visits, a new book follows. In this case, Prof. Sen is here to promote an expanded version of his 1970 book, Collective Choices and Social Welfare. Sen, 83, a former Master of Trinity College, Cambridge University, now teaches at Harvard. In recent years he has been involved in a bitter war of words with the Narendra Modi government over his role as former Chancellor of Nalanda University. Sen makes no secret of his distaste for Prime Minister Modi’s style of governance. Under the BJP-led NDA, Sen says dissent has been stifled, autonomy of universities compromised, and institutions of governance subverted.

Some of this may well be true. But Sen misses the bigger picture. Universities in India have always been subjected to governmental interference. When the Congress-led UPA government was in office between 2004 and 2014, it passed the Right to Education (RTE) legislation that has not helped modernise the Indian educational system. Its implementation has been severely criticised by educationists.

Sen rarely critiques this failure or the appalling state of government-run primary schools where the educational foundation among the rural poor is laid. Who is responsible for the abysmal state of our schools? The three-year-old Modi government or 55 years of Congress governments under Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh? Sen’s trenchant criticism rarely extends to them, opening him up to the charge of intellectual flexibility. It is important to criticise the Modi government – on my part I have done so in several columns across a broad spectrum of issues. But visceral one-sided criticism traduces the critic, not the target of the criticism. A man of Sen’s acuity should know that.

Dissent is the life-blood of democracy. Sen is saying little original when he emphasises this, as he frequently does. But he errs grievously when he calls the Indian government a “minority government” as he did in one of his interviews last week. This is what Sen said: “Anti-national is a peculiar term to come from a minority government. It shows that there is a level of arrogance there. A 31 per cent vote share certainly does not allow you to label the remaining 69 per cent to be anti-national.” Sen’s comment represents a misstatement of facts. Every government in India since Independence has been, by Sen’s own definition, a “minority government”.

Even in India’s first general election in 1952, the near-monopolistic Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru won a “minority” 45 per cent national vote share. In 1957 it won 47.7 per cent vote share. In the 1962 Lok Sabha elections, the Nehru-led Congress won 44.7 per cent. In her “landslide” 1971 Lok Sabha win, Indira Gandhi captured 43.6 per cent national voteshare. As Indian politics became more fractured in the 1990s, voteshares declined. Narasimha Rao won 35.9 per cent in 1991. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi accounted for 26.5 per cent national voteshare in 2004 and 28.5 per cent in 2009. None of these governments were branded “minority governments” by Sen. Such selectivity does him no credit.

At nearly 40 per cent, the NDA’s voteshare in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections came close to Nehru’s victories (when the Congress had little opposition) and is higher than Indira’s 1971 win which Sen would be mortified to categorise as having led to the formation of a “minority government ”. Promoting his book last week, Sen told The Economic Times: “But I am also worried that people are feeling less free and less confident to express their points of view. That decline has been quite prominent in India.” That flies in the face of facts. Ever since the Modi government took office, college campuses, TV panelists, newspaper op-eds and opposition leaders have engaged in more dissent against this government and more criticism of its actions (as indeed in democracies they should) than the silent Manmohan Singh and stentorian Sonia Gandhi ever had to endure. Freedom of speech has never been so robust. Albert Einstein used to say that the clever simplify complicated things. Those attempting to be clever complicate simple things.

MINHAZ MERCHANT 

The writer is author of The New Clash of Civilizations: How The Contest Between America, China, India and Islam Will Shape Our Century.

Source: DNA, 2-03-2017

Nalanda University governing board: Amartya Sen, Sugata Bose out

Founding chancellor and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is no longer a part of the governing board of the Nalanda University (NU).

President Pranab Mukherjee has approved a reconstitution of the governing board in his capacity as the Visitor of NU, according to a government order.

Professor Arvind Sharma, faculty of religious studies, McGill University (Canada), Prof Lokesh Chandra, president, Indian Council for Cultural Relations and Dr Arvind Panagariya, vice-chairman of the NITI Ayog, are the new faces in the reconstituted board.

Along with Amartya Sen, Harvard professor and Trinamool Congress MP Sugata Bose and UK-based economist and Labour politician Lord Meghnad Desai are out of the board.

“President Pranab Mukherjee, in his capacity as Visitor of NU, is pleased to approve the constitution of the governing board with immediate effect in accordance with clause 7 of the NU Act,” said the November 21 order from the ministry of external affairs.

The move coincides with vice-chancellor (V-C) Gopa Sabharwal’s tenure, which ends on November 24 and the process for her successor is already on.

The governing board has a chancellor, presently George Yeo of Singapore, V-C, representatives of five member countries, including India, China, Australia, Laos and Thailand, secretary (east), ministry of external affairs (MEA), two representatives from the government of Bihar and one representative from the ministry of human resources and development (HRD).

The only member of the mentor group, to have retained his position in the new governing board, as government of India representative, is former Rajya Sabha MP NK Singh. Other countries would name their representatives later.

Sen was with the NU since its inception and was its founding chancellor. He had resigned last year after being reportedly upset over the “delay in extension of his tenure and political interference” despite board’s recommendation for his second term.

NU outgoing V-C Sabharwal said the decision to reconstitute the governing board was surprising.

“It has come midway through the process of appointment of a new V-C, bypassing the chancellor. It was the NU governing board, which was hitherto insisting on fresh constitution of the board. However, it was not done then on the plea that amendments to the NU Act would first need to be carried out. Now, the board has been suddenly reconstituted,” she said.

Singh said though the board had recommended another year’s extension for Sabharwal, it was not found legally tenable following consultation with the attorney general.

Sabharwal had got a year’s extension after completion of the stipulated five-year tenure in 2015.

As per the Nalanda University Act, the senior most dean of NU will take V-C’s charge till a new incumbent is appointed.

The NU search committee had invited applications for the V-C’s post in October. The last date for applying is November 30. The Visitor makes the appointment from the panel of names recommended by the governing board.

Source: Hindustan Times, 24-11-2016

NDA has failed on reforms, says Amartya Sen

However, the NDA government had done more than the UPA government in removing ineffective subsidies. There was more to be done.'

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has said that the NDA government had been slow to move on key reforms and even failed to deliver on the reforms it had promised, thus hampering the successful functioning of a market economy.

Professor Sen said the reforms were essential for continued fast growth and development. However, Professor Sen told The Hindu in an interview that the NDA government had done more than the UPA government in removing ineffective subsidies. There was more to be done, he added.

Professor Sen also argued that, at a time when around half of India doesn’t have access to schools, focusing on the controversial Free Basics programme by Facebook is a mistake. Excerpts:

Where do you think the discipline of economics is headed? Do you see it going in a direction you approve of?

I think there are many changes taking place and a number of them one must approve of. There are a number of changes linking theory with empirical observations, that’s a positive thing. There is much greater interest in not seeing analytical mathematical economics as a separate discipline from normal non-mathematical reasoning because we have to put them together. I am in favour of all of them. There is always an amount of what I would describe as hi-tech circus, where you do trapeze jumping, in any subject and that is true of economics also.

But I think the important thing to recognise is that there are many lessons from traditional economics which have not been sufficIently well absorbed in policy making, for example, in India. And I will put my focus on that because there are lesson that traditional mainstream economic reasoning offers which we have not made good use of, and even though we need the subject itself to evolve -- that is certainly needed -- but even without that there are many understandings that are very important for thinking about the future of an economy which are not getting the kind of attention they ought to get.

What would the lessons be for India?

The three big lessons that economics offers have not been fully appreciated. One is the lesson that you need a successful market economy for continued fast growth and development. That is being absorbed but even now I have to say that the Modi government has been too slow with the reforms and has not carried out the reforms they promised they will.

Secondly, while the market economy does well for industries and agriculture, by and large, with a few exceptions, it does not do well for education and healthcare. There you need the government to come in in a big way, a point that was made by Adam Smith in 1776. And that has been neglected and not much has happened on that. The UPA government was an under-performer and the Modi government is even more of a disaster.

The third point is the issue of asymmetric information: the fact that quite often the buyers don’t know what the seller is selling. This is a very important part in the understanding of any market economy, and which is why the idea that you could privatise healthcare at a basic level without first providing public health is something that has not been possible in any country in the world and it will not be possible in India.

India is the only country which is trying to get universally educated and universal healthcare through the private sector. Japan, US, Europe, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Hong Kong, Singapore, whether they are politically right or politically left, they all saw the importance of the state in making education and healthcare widely spread and universal.

So you don’t think that this excessive reliance on empiricism is getting in the way of theoretical economics?

You can make a fetish of empiricism and you can make a fetish of pure theory. But I think the main thing is to recognise that economics is ultimately an empirical subject and the theory is about the empirical reality in the world, which is about how the world functions but also about how the world ought to function, what are the demands of good policy. And these you might think are not matters of discussion but they are because we have certain views on them, we have certain ways of judging whether an economy is doing well or not and we could on the basis of reasoning arrive at some agreement as to whether the economy is doing well or not doing well, if you are open to reasoning.

I think those things require both empirical data and scrutiny as well as a very close examination of the information we have on one side as well as understanding and critical acceptability of the theories that allow us to interpret the data and also take a view on what could in fact be done for making the shape of the economy better.

Do you still think that the Keynesian approach to economics is still relevant today?

Well, it’s relevant to many countries in the world, if by Keynesian you mean general theory. I think the insights of Keynesian economics were badly neglected in Europe and also somewhat neglected in the Republican-dominated Congress, but not ignored by the Federal Reserve system.

But Europe neglected it very much indeed by just going in for balancing budgets at a time when it just made no sense. People forget that when they get into a situation that the ratio of public debt to national income rose as far high as 70 per cent under Gordon Brown, but they forget it was 220 per cent when the National Health Service was started. So I think they are making a shibboleth out of a kind of concocted number. A ratio of A to B is a mistake and that is one of the lessons Keynes taught us.

Now, we (India) may have made many mistakes, but neither the UPA government nor the present policies under Raghuram Rajan could be accused of ignoring these facts. I think the insights have been fairly well absorbed in India.

We’re nearing on two years of the Modi government. At the end of the first year you had said that Modi’s idea of development was more on the corporate and institutional side than on individual development…

I’m not sure I quite said that. I thought that the idea that development is only a matter of successful planning of financial investment rather than building up the capability of human beings through education, healthcare and social security, I was grumbling about that. Now, that wasn’t only at the end of the first year, it was also at the beginning of the first year. That was their policy and it still is. Education and healthcare were badly neglected by the previous UPA government and it is even more badly neglected by the Modi government now.

So that feeling has been reinforced now?

Yes, reinforced in that I see no reason to revise that judgement.

Schemes like Skill India, Jan Dhan Yojana and the various insurance schemes which are linked to making the lives of the individuals better, how would you rate those?

The basic thing that ails the Indian people is lack of education, lack of healthcare and lack of social security. And no matter how extraordinarily innovative-sounding, and I say innovative-sounding rather than innovative, these new schemes may be, of this kind of insurance or that kind of insurance, it is not going to take away from the fact that with an unhealthy, uneducated labour force, it is very difficult to generate income from them and very difficult for solidly-shared development growth at a high level to continue.

The government has carried out Direct Benefits Transfers in LPG subsidies and in MGNREGA wages. Do you think that is a system that works and should it be extended to the rest of the PDS?

Well, the LPG subsidy removal is something I have been recommending again and again in my last book, that you should remove all LPG subsidies. They haven’t done that yet. They ought to do all of it. There is still subsidised electricity, where parts of India don’t even have a power connection, but those who have it get it at a subsidised price, which I don’t think is a very good idea. These have to be changed.

But the Modi government under Jaitley has done more in removing these subsidies than the UPA government did.

MGNREGA is a much more complicated story and they were very critical of it before but they seem to have embraced it now.

But the direct transfer of subsidies to bank accounts, is that sustainable and workable?

Well, it has some positive things and some negative things. For example, if there is a gender bias. If you send the subsidy to the family, then the people more likely to benefit are the boys rather than the girls. And if you did it with a more on-kind transfer, that’s unlikely to happen.

So there are positive and negative elements in it. I can see why it is attractive and I also see what the limitations of that are.

What do you think about the government’s Odd-Even rule?

(laughs) My thoughts are not great on that.

And what do you think about Facebook’s Free Basics?

You know, in a country where half the population doesn’t have a school to go to, to concentrate on the internet is a bit of a mistake.

Keywords: Amartya Sen, NDA government, Narendra Modi, subsidies, economic reforms, LPG subsidy removal, Free Basics

Source: The Hindu, 8-01-2015

Amartya Sen: National security is one component of human security

Nalanda is not a Buddhist university, nor was the old Nalanda. So, had we looked for a monk to run the university, it would have been a mistake — that was not what we were seeking.

Economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s latest book, The Country of First Boys, is a collection of essays on an array of topics, ranging from development, justice, and education, to calendars, Rabindranath Tagore, and the importance of play. In an interview with The Hindu, Prof. Sen spoke candidly about the need to prioritise human security and not just national security, the controversy that has dogged the Nalanda University, and, drawing inspiration from Adam Smith, the need for an intelligent response to rampant capitalism. Excerpts:

In your book, you speak of the different priorities of human security and national security. Don’t you think national security often becomes an alibi for not spending enough on human security?

Well, there are three things. Firstly, security ultimately is a matter in which the leading concern should be around human life. So if we are speaking of security, it has to be human security. Since this also means security from external threats and violence, what we call national security is only one of the constituent factors in human security.

Secondly, it is true that in the name of national security, resources are often not allocated to things on which human security depends, such as education, health care, and a social safety net. And sometimes, national security in the political context seems like a barrier rather than a component to fostering human security. But at the same time, when we consider reducing the budget for national security, we also have to think of the other implications. There’s no reason why there should be a conflict between the two.

Thirdly, the neglect of education, health care, and social safety net has been so foundational in India, so deeply rooted in the class structure of the society, that to blame it all on national security would be a mistake.

Your work has helped shift the focus of development from economic growth to concerns about the quality of human life. Is it time now for another shift — from human development to social justice, as the true measure of a nation’s progress towards being a more developed society?

When we came up with the Human Development Index (HDI), the idea was to have a simple index that would capture something better than the GDP figures. If you look at the very first Human Development Report (HDR) of 1990, we invoked the idea of justice in a number of cases. I think as human development grows as a discipline, justice will increasingly become a bigger component of it.

How do you respond to critics of development economics such as Arturo Escobar and Majid Rahnema, who argue that the very discourse of development perpetrates a regime of powerlessness and ‘unfreedom’ among those identified as ‘underdeveloped’, who are then coerced to follow the Western model of industrialisation and market-led development?

I respond with a great deal of scepticism to this line of reasoning. Adam Smith [whose major work, The Wealth of Nations, was published in 1776] was constantly concerned about human life, about distribution, the divide between the rich and the poor, the role of the market in the efficient production of commodities and the government’s role in providing education, health care, and social safety nets. I think this lesson remains relevant. To call it a ‘Western model’ undersells it. The market economy was not purely an invention of the West — there was trade between Egypt and Babylon, and you find trade seals in Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.

But there was no capitalism at that point.

That’s true, but capitalism is a very peculiar term. The way the interests of the poor are consistently neglected — if you call this capitalism, then I would object to this kind of system. In this sense, Smith was in many ways an anti-capitalist. While he was in favour of private ownership of capital, he also thought that whenever rich men got together, they conspired on how to defraud the poor. He never used the word ‘capitalism’, but he was against the excessive power of capital; so am I; and in many ways, so was Karl Marx.

Coming to the subject of Nalanda, people have criticised Dr. Gopa Sabharwal’s appointment as vice-chancellor of the university. They point out that she neither has any background in Buddhist studies nor does she fit the UGC criteria for vice-chancellorship — at least 10 years as a professor in a university set-up.

She is a very good vice-chancellor. It’s not surprising that given the Indian caste system, caste-like issues have cropped up, with people saying that for a vice-chancellorship, the candidate’s caste has to be that of a professor and not a reader, and certainly not a lecturer. In such a regime, the great American universities would not have flourished.

Secondly, Nalanda is not a Buddhist university, nor was the old Nalanda. So, had we looked for a monk to run the university, it would have been a mistake — that was not what we were seeking.

There’s a new chancellor now, George Yeo from Singapore. Chancellor Yeo has made a public statement saying that Dr. Sabharwal is a very suitable vice-chancellor and he would like her to continue. The propaganda against Dr. Sabharwal was quite orchestrated.

In your book you poke fun at the Indian Left for its “antiquated understanding of imperialism” and its obsession with “American imperialism”. The U.S. has 900 military bases in 130 countries — you think there is no such thing as American imperialism?

It is certainly unbalanced that America has so many bases across the world, and to worry about it is legitimate. But to be able not to think of anything else is a mistake. I was thinking particularly of the time when the Left decided to pull the government down over India’s nuclear deal with the U.S.

Is there such a thing as American imperialism? In some ways there is. But there is some Indian imperialism as well. There’s also some Chinese imperialism, and some French and British too. American imperialism is much more important than these, that’s true. But I am against a situation where the Left cannot think independently because of their obsession with one thing.

Now the party is under a new leadership with Sitaram Yechury, and one hopes that there will be more intelligent thinking. I am in favour of humanity, equity and justice, but also in favour of intelligence.

sampath.g@thehindu.co.in

Keywords: Nalanda University, Prof Amartya Sen, human security, national security, American imperialism

Source: The Hindu, 24-12-2015