Walk The Talk with Amartya Sen

let me start with this there is nothing more exciting for a famous Rockstar student to come back to his old college and don't worry I'm not talking about myself or my college I'm talking about Delhi School of economics and who's our Rockstar old alas but Professor Amara sen Professor sen you're very kind thank welcome to walk the talk and and welcome back to Delhi School of Economics wonderful to be back here I think after a long time after I think about a dozen years now it's great to be back here and a lot has changed we see the Commerce block has come up the case earlier so so all economists do not have to become professors now no but I think I think Del School of Economics had a a stream of um product of different kind academics uh uh people who went into professional life um of other kinds and um and busness too and commerce but the totality of that no it's been a great school it Still Remains a great school but this has been the engine of uh economic thought over these many many many decades and many of your students have become Stars well I'm very proud of them and certainly it has been my most important formative period of thinking when I got the Nobel uh most of the work that was cited were actually done when I was in Del School of economics in the 60s so this has been for me a very um moving as well as formatively uh integrative process in my life and you can see we are collecting crowds as you might with the Bollywood star if you stand in Del School of Economics you will get crowd no matter who it is and that's how it was your time so tell us about some of your students well I think uh probably the greatest uh certainly one of the greatest uh I've ever had was fanto patn right he came here shortly after I moved in 63 and he was a he became one of the leading social Choice theorists in the world changed the nature of the subject I still remember his arriving from Ora uh not technically trained with the trained and with a level of intelligence and talent that was totally extraordinary what what Americans called raw smarts he he was and I remember giving him various problems to solve which people didn't know the answer to at that time uh and he saw them usually in about one1 of the time that I expected he will do in the pre pre-computer era more or less and some of the others there were many see I there some came here some came from St there was I think K Basu when there R de were the student here there was a whole lot of people coming out I think I think we can take a whole program in fact walk the talk in fact the last walk the talk we recorded here was with Dr Manmohan Singh just just before he became prime minister yeah but he was a great colleague of mine of course here uh at that time and I had really great colleagues um enm number top and white children in in fact any time people say that Manan Singh cannot talk I send them a link to that interview because he can talk very well and very convincingly and yet surprisingly for 10 years he did not talk I'm not going to discuss that with you he was a good teacher he was a good teacher excellent teacher yeah yeah yeah so that's the reason I said he's very convincing when he talks yeah he is of course because and is um he was a great Expositor too right yeah absolutely no I think the great thing was the combination of the the chemistry of the of the really Bri student and the and the I thought I was very lucky to get the Galaxy of professors as my colleagues right and I think the interactions were so extraordinary but teaching of economics has changed and as economics has changed over the decades it has changed uh in many different ways but you know da School of Economics was something of a Pioneer at that time uh here and it wasn't very different from if you take specialized subject like social Choice Theory Ware economics uh economic theory in general I don't think there's a radical difference between what we are doing here and what I'm doing in Harvard or did in in in in Trin College Cambridge or in or in uh or in Oxford or LC you know I think um the the change is more about the content the nature of the problem how we approach them I don't think the method of dealing with economic theoretical problems have really radically changed till about a quarter of a century back most economics in India was socialist economics including Dr sings I don't agree with that that's that's a good beginning for us it's a very good beginning I think that's a confusion it was a active State we did nothing for Education very little very little for healthare I don't know of any socialist state for which that's to even the Soviet Union China Cuba Vietnam Vietnam they all had full literacy health care for all and if you judge so ISM by that I was about to say North Korea but I stopped but North Korea never had that I'm not sure it's a socialist economy it's certainly a fascist economy of some sense but I think the confusion is that the role of the state in that case was quite high and very often in areas in which the state really had very little to offer like having a license Rod making business very difficult and what the state could do well namely education public education public they did not so call it a socialist state would be complete confusion I think I don't I'm not accusing you of that but it's a common confusion I think there was an active State doing things it was very bad at and not doing things which it would have been good at if they did it so Professor s uh you think just as the growth versus redistribution debate has got caught has got mired in a simplistic construct so has this idea that economics used to be socialist earlier and now it's reform economics yeah I think both of them are fundamentally mistaken decoty um I think the Socialist economics is probably the bigger one to think of India is a socialist economy when uh more than half the kids didn't have any schools didn't have any kind of Health Care uh is ridiculous socialist economic if you think of Soviet Union initially China um uh and um Cuba Vietnam they had all kinds of economic incentive problems and they had to be dealt with but they covered everyone in education and healthare and the engine of growth if particularly if you think of China today has been to deal with an educated labor force and a healthy labor force which is why when it comes Mr Modi has quite rightly emphasized make in India but make in India means you can produce anything from thermometer to staplers to calculators to computers now we areis well anything but if you're educated labor force you can read what's being instructed quality control and so on and healthy labor force too on the other hand if you have um some comfortable people who can do very well pharmaceutical it autoart and nothing of the flexibility that represents a defect of the uh education and healthare system then you can do complex manufactur but is nothing to do with socialism it's something to do with and socialism important idea but this particular thing is nothing to do with it it is the productivity of having a healthy educated labor force which is Central to Economic Development as Adam Smith argued more than 200 years ago as he pointed out that we need economic growth which by the way always supported contrary to sometime what I read in the papers I believe your PhD was on economic indeed it choice of technique with all economic growth as a criteria which I argued for against others and the the main thing is to recognize that there are things that the state can do education and Healthcare in a way that the private sector cannot there are many things that the private sector can do which they still cannot do well and unfortunately in India it wasn't socialist but it was very very counterproductive Arrangement where State tried to do things which it couldn't do well like industry license rod and so on running an airline running hotel Running an airline and hotel yeah I still have to stay in a comfortable state owned Hotel it hadn't happened yet uh and at the same time didn't do the thing that the state ought to do namely education Healthcare that's not a failure of socialism it's a failure of the state bad kind VI bad kind of understanding of the duties of the state and it doesn't help them to put education and Healthcare as entitlement which is really a ridiculous way of thinking about it is the basic responsibility of the state to meet the human rights or education and healthare which a citizen of a of a Nation ought to have that's the issue and that is not versus goow that is the biggest engine of economic growth China would not have been where it is but for that Japan would not have been Korea would not have been we missed out that that's the big thing so India is not a failure of any ISM it's a failure of governance failure of governance failure of clarity of thought and when you did for example when the economic reforms happened uh and man M Singh had a big role in that obviously a leadership role in that and I was and I did have a lot of conversation with him I was in favor of the reform because I want1 1991 some of your critics say that you stayed away from reforms I said that I didn't you can ask the on that and then you you a s completely my point then was that Manan could have done both together right namely on one side remove the control and and have remove the LI r at the same time make a gigantic increase in healthcare and education that was the debate it was not about foren anti-reform the question was reform plus not reform [Music] minus

Channel: NDTV

Views: 52,545

Keywords: Amartya Sen, Bharat Ratna, Nobel laureate, Walk The Talk, healthcare, education, NDTV 24x7

Id: 02dUHTfWng0

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2015