Why Amartya Sen Is Wrong

Jaithirth Rao

12 Aug, 2015

http://swarajyamag.com/magazine/why-amartya-sen-is-wrong-2/

Jaithirth 'Jerry' Rao is the founder and former CEO of IT giant MphasiS, and was head of Citibank's Global Technology Development Division. He is currently the Executive Chairman of Value and Budget Housing Corporation (VBHC), an affordable housing venture 

It is necessary for an intellectual of Sen’s standing to help India, but he can help only if he is willing to illuminate his discussions with his intelligence, not with his prejudices.

Amartya sen is brilliant. About that fact, there is no doubt at all. He is a genius, a scholar and he writes and speaks with superb aplomb. But just because the Swedes have recognized him (after which of course, the Bharat Sarkar duly handed him a Bharat Ratna!), and just because affluent leftists who live in Boston and subscribe to The New York Times admire Sen, it does not follow that he is always right. In fact, sometimes he can be and is dangerously wrong. Dangerous because people end up listening to him and doing foolish things.

He starts off his book on justice (The Idea of Justice, 2009), with a description of a hypothetical situation. There is a violin. And there are three children. One child made the violin; one child plays the violin very well; and one poor child has never had any toys. The ethical quandary: which child should get the violin? How best can the interests of justice and ethics be served?

The doctrine of property rights would suggest that the child who made the violin should get ownership rights. An aesthetically sensitive person would argue that the child who plays the violin best deserves it. The rest of us can get to listen to some great music. The total quantum of joy in the world would be increased, not just for the child, but for hundreds of listeners. Bleeding hearts would argue that the interests of equity and justice demand that the poor, deprived child who has never known the happiness of playing with toys is the obvious candidate for the violin. How can it be otherwise?

The rest of the book is a long meditative essay on this quandary and on related ideas of justice and ethics. It is a fascinating book by any standards.

But of course, the whole quandary is a phony one. Even Sen’s dim-witted undergraduate students should be able to figure out that if you violate property rights and take away the violin from the producer, no new violins will ever get produced. The gifted or the poor child will end up having the last violin on the planet. The producer child and his imitators will get the message clearly and bluntly: there are aesthetes and bleeding hearts out there who will expropriate the proceeds of my labour and my talent (to produce) and give it away to others who they consider more “deserving”. Why should I bother to make any more violins?

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And above all, he needs to give us ideas as to how to help the child who made the violin in the first place to make more violins and how to help the other two children rent or buy the violins.

If he engages with us on this basis, of course he may end up upsetting his admirers at JNU. But Professor, I submit that this is a risk worth taking. The dialogue will be more productive and the outcomes more useful.

The author is the former CEO of MphasiS, and was head of Citibank’s Global Technology Division. He is currently the Executive Chairman of Value and Budget Housing Corporation (VBHC), an affordable housing venture. Rao is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Swarajya.

This article was published in the August 2015 issue of Swarajya.