INTERVIEWS
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

Jay Dubashi

NRIs like Amartya Sen mean well but they hardly know India

Amartya Sen came, saw and went away, back to his college in Cambridge, and possibly other worlds to conquer. He was feted by his old college in Delhi, also by the prime minister, but generally kept a low profile. Of course, he said the usual things, gave us the politically correct advice to cut down defence expenditure, and advised the government to spend more on education.

But he did not set the Jamuna on fire. What he said was so conventional that many people wondered if it was really worth a Nobel prize. For a person who has spent a lifetime in education, it is understandable he should be giving so much importance to it. But is that the real key to development?

The more educated an Indian, the less he remains in his country of birth. Like Sen, he takes the first opportunity to emigrate to make his fortune outside India. Of what use is all this education, and prizes like Nobel, asked a columnist in a Bombay newspaper, if it does not benefit India, at least not directly?

That is why I am sceptical of the non-resident Indians like Sen and others who obviously mean well but who hardly know India. Take this education business he is so keen on. Has he visited Kerala? It is a state with the highest literacy in India, possibly in Asia. The average Keralite is an educated, knowledgeable person, and going by Sen's theories, his state should be doing very well indeed.

Unfortunately, it is not. The average Keralite does well, but not in Kerala. Kerala is just like any other poor state, in fact, poorer than most. It is as poor as Orissa in per capita terms, and as every Indian knows, Orissa is one of the most backward states in the country. Orissa has also, unlike Kerala, one of the lowest literacy rates in India.

Education is all very well, but what India needs is more physical development, more and better roads, more houses, more industries, drinking water in villages and, of course, more and better schools. But schools by themselves are not enough, unless there are jobs to go with them.

Just as there are NRIs, there are NRPs, non-resident Pakistanis. Mahboob-al-Huq, the economist, is one, or was one, for unfortunately he is no more. Huq spent most of his time outside Pakistan, though he worked on a subject, greatly beloved of NRI as well as NRP economists, namely, poverty. He was also for a while finance minister under Zia.

Sen says that Huq has done a great deal of work on defence expenditures of countries and worked out in some detail benefits accruing to India and Pakistan from cuts in defence outlays.

Fine. But was Huq able to persuade Zia to slash his defence budget? As finance minister, did Huq reduce Pakistan's defence budget? If not, what was he doing as finance minister, with all his fancy theories worked out to the last decimal point on computers gifted, no doubt, by the World Bank, where also he worked?

I have nothing against Sen, Huq and others, who, for reasons of their own, preferred to work outside their countries, directing seminars on poverty to participants drawn from filthy rich foundations, for whom poverty is another fashionable fad, as it is for certain film actresses in Bombay.

Another winter visitor was Lord Meghnad Desai, who teaches economics in London and who is also free with advice to Indians and India. Desai says that it does not matter who invests in India as long he creates jobs.

He gives the example of his own country -- Desai is now a Britisher -- which used to make motorcars at one time but does not have a single British motor car factory of its own. Yet, says Desai, the country exports a million cars every year!

What Desai did not say is that the fact that Britain is now almost a colony of the Americans who have made Tony Blair, the prime minister, a lapdog of the US. Everytime the Americans crack their whip, Blair jumps up and asks for his biscuit. This is what the Britishers are saying, not me.

By all means, get all the foreign investment you can get, no questions asked, if you want India to be a lapdog of the West. There are so-called liberals in India who would not mind this. I do, and that is why I find Lord Desai's theories totally unacceptable.

Jay Dubashi

Business News