Desperate denialists
I had promised myself never to take Amartya Sen seriously from the day I first heard him speak years ago at the Institute of economic growth on poverty and entitlement theory. I was a young brash scholar then who found his theories both illogical and eccentric. And unfortunately, this opinion of mine has never changed a bit despite my age, experience or his Nobel. Though I always managed to maintain my intelligent silence over any reference in any of the conferences on his theories and observations whenever mentioned by others. But his recent article on Indian election result and it's most unintelligent interpretation compelled me to respond even at the cost of compromising with my own standards. Thus this spontaneous and almost instant blog.
He feels that democracy is beyond 'counting' of votes or public mandate. Any reactions? Does this notion sounds familiar? He further says that the performance of (our) democratic processes should be judged on the international ratings prepared by the opinions of a bunch of magazines and news papers. Curious indeed. The vibrancy of a democracy depends upon how the democratic processes are being viewed by the rest of the world is a shameless insult of the mandate of the people of a country. This it self is undemocratic. Quoting a number of international newspapers and magazines he naively attempts to argue that the vision, wisdom and 'will' of the 130 crores people of India, who decide to elect a democratic government through a refined peaceful and state of the art electing process is useless, but the sponsored or, (ill informed) comments of a small section of the world media, which receive its regular manufactured inputs and feedback from pseudo and 'contract' intellectuals - is the deciding factor for the quality of our democracy. Interestingly, these magazines might change their stance over weekends but professor Sen will still depend his conclusions on them. Even the strongest supporter of authoritarianism or oligarchy too would not have make such illogical remarks. People who have no connect with Indian realities (or the soul of this civilizational nation) or with emerging aspirational India write about India which such effortless authority is unacceptable. The argumentive Indian fails to notice transforming India with skill, speed and scale he ignores to see that per day 84080 toilets work made, 13021 houses were constructed for the poor, 102731 gas connections were given to the poor women, 514 km. roads per day were made for poor, villages and 286752 Jandhan accounts were opened for the poorest of the poor per day through which 46377 Crores were transferred each day. What better standards can you establish for poverty removal?
The recent reactions of professor Sen reminds me of the miserable stories of old Indian nawabs who had wasted their wealth in unproductive activities and even when penniless pretended to be rich and resourceful and chose to stay in denial mode forever in their deserted havelis. Sad stories portrayed in Indian cinema of 70s. I am sure being such an sharp observer on India, professor Sen must have himself watched a few movies like these so I needn't explain much.
The shelf life of some economic theories and economist is over. So is their 'Time’. That they are in denial mode doesn't help. But It's understandable too. As their mom-and-pop shops ran on some flimsy theories or on criticizing some imaginary negations and fear mongering about India. They manufactured fears, even generated data in their small survey factories funded by certain international groups to support the hypotheses which had an international market! later these theories were sold with their intellectual analyses and institutanised with the help of seminars, conferences, writings and think tanks. This was the network of 'intellectual production activities' on which a sizeable section of intellectuals' survival depended all these years. From entitlement to food security to discrimination and tyranny of the household, their theories were polished and fascinating like all drug induced imagination is! But just as imagination, it had no connect with the actual situations. Therefore the policy prescription based on them failed miserably. with the emergence of India's unique endogenous development model their imaginary theories faded and collapsed in the light of reality of transforming India. But the Hangover still remains.
No intelligent person would talk about the asymmetry in opportunities like media time or money in elections without mentioning the role of Congress because these were the asymmetries on which congress empire was built, sustained and thrived. But professor Sen does precisely this! Strangely he totally ignores that aspect in earlier elections. If he made a compression he him self will be surprised Did he brother to calculate the entire media time and attention given to Arvind Kejriwal before and during vidhan Sabha elections in Delhi and afterwards? Or did he bother to calculate the total media time and space hogged by Mrs Priyanka Gandhi in these elections? He talks about Doordarshan giving more time to BJP which (presumably) has lower viewership anyway. Again, he speaks about opposition parties and negation of negation theory but he is missing the major point of democracy itself. It is free will and the empowerment of citizens for the effective exercising of the right to choose. if people's choice is Narendra Modi and BJP, rational choice too in this case, he suggests methods to distort that rational choice by creating an illusion of an alternative agenda for the sake of agenda! whereas the real or hidden agenda is defeating the choice or will of the people- Narendra Modi in this case. How this can be a service to democratic values is beyond me. In simple language this is called deception which he is openly suggesting the opposition should have done to win! undemocratic intentions have been totally exposed. Weather people agree on his views of judging a win by his suggested standards depends on their wisdom they certainly have the wisdom to understand the 'pseudo intellectuals' conspiracy against the Indian democracy.
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