![\"amratya](\"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/amratya-sen.png\")
<\/a>\nJul 10, 2013<\/p>\n
Amartya Sen, the intellectual patron of many of the UPA\u2019s economic follies, of which the latest \u2013 the Food Security Bill \u2013 is on the cusp of ruining things further, deserves to be debunked.<\/p>\n
Once lauded for his work on famine and hunger, Sen today is a practitioner of charlatan economics that has very little to do with helping the poor.<\/p>\n
Commonsense should tell us that acute hunger is more or less gone \u2013 except in some pockets of India. Malnutrition, of course, is another matter, since it involves a whole lot of other inputs from maternal care and giving children enough nutrition once they are born. Neither of these problems is going to be solved by giving two-thirds of India (more than 800 million people) rice, wheat and coarse cereals at Rs 3, Rs 2 and Re 1 a kg.<\/p>\n
Ruining the economy, of course, is entirely possible with this mindless scheme.<\/p>\n
Dealing with malnutrition calls for an entirely different approach to food security \u2013 and the UPA\u2019s next flagship folly comes nowhere near addressing it. And yet, Amartya Sen is backing a bad idea.<\/p>\n
ALSO SEE:<\/p>\n
Stuck record: Why Amartya Sen is wrong on food security again<\/p>\n
Food security for dummies: it’s about people, not Amartya Sen, and it works<\/p>\n
Food security ordinance: Why UPA’s ‘good intentions’ are ruinous<\/p>\n
Dealing with malnutrition calls for an entirely different approach to food security \u2013 and the UPA\u2019s next flagship folly comes nowhere near addressing it. And yet, Amartya Sen is backing a bad idea.
\nDealing with malnutrition calls for an entirely different approach to food security \u2013 and the UPA\u2019s next flagship folly comes nowhere near addressing it. And yet, Amartya Sen is backing a bad idea.<\/p>\n
Sen\u2019s charlatan economics have been repeatedly exposed by more sensible economists.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s Business Standard, for example, has an article by Arvind Subramanian, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Center for Global Development, which rubbishes Sen\u2019s stand on food security. (Read here).<\/p>\n
Critiquing Sen\u2019s backing for the UPA\u2019s entitlements-based policy framework, of which the Food Bill is only the latest exhibit, Subramanian gives five solid reason why this approach is seriously flawed.<\/p>\n
One, it causes economic instability and vulnerability. The domestic slowdown and the antics of the rupee are clear evidence of this. No further proof is required of the damage caused by UPA-nomics.<\/p>\n
Two, the rights-based approach \u201clegitimises atrocious policies\u201d. Leave alone food, Subramanian shows how energy subsidies have ballooned over the last 10 years of UPA rule, distorting the choices people make in multiple spheres \u2013 from bad crop patterns to wrong fertiliser use to under-investment in power.<\/p>\n
Three, the rights-based approach also \u201cundervalues opportunity costs\u201d. Subramanian gives the example of the right to education (RTE) \u2013 an enormously expensive exercise with doubtful payoffs. It would have been far cheaper and more effective to focus on ensuring teachers turned up for work \u2013 thus improving student learning. The RTE is an extravagance the country could have done without, when cheaper and more focused solutions were possible. The UPA never weighed the costs of what could have been done with the money spent \u2013 hence incurring a huge opportunity cost.<\/p>\n
Four, Subramanian correctly suggests that the rights-based approach overburdens the state\u2019s capabilities. The state\u2019s first duty is to protect its people, deliver law and order, and ensure basic rights, and public facilities. When the focus shifts to private welfare benefits such as providing food and homesteads, the state fails to deliver on public goods, as Ajay Shah points out in this article.<\/p>\n
Five, ultimately, overburdening the state leads to its weakness. Subramanian says that when the state does not provide the basics of protection, health and education services, and focuses instead on redistribution, it loses the allegiance of the middle class. They will evade taxes, educate their children abroad, live in gated colonies, and generally turn away from the state.<\/p>\n
Concludes Subramanian, who started out as an admirer of Sen: \u201cFor this admirer of Professor Sen\u2019s exceptional academic work, two ironies stand out. His Nobel-winning insight was about the importance of broad purchasing power rather than the narrow (physical) availability of food in avoiding famines and mass starvation. It is curious, even mystifying, therefore, to see him forcefully advocate, through morbidity-laden polemic, the physical provision of one type of food \u2013 cereals, which are rapidly declining in people\u2019s consumption basket \u2013 to help reduce malnutrition.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it is not only Subramanian who is disillusioned with UPA\u2019s voodoo economics and Sen\u2019s efforts to give it intellectual heft. Earlier, Arvind Panagariya of Columbia University spoke out when Sen made a fool of himself by claiming that every week\u2019s delay in the Food Bill caused 1,000 deaths.<\/p>\n
Panagariya told The Economic Times: \u201cI was taken aback when I heard Sen forcefully attribute a specific number of child deaths of \u201c1,000 per week\u201d to the lack of passage of the Food Security Bill on a TV debate\u2026 I am mystified by how one can attribute a precise number of child deaths to the absence of a policy that has not been in place for a single day, a policy that is subject to so many lapses and leakages along the implementation chain, whose impact critically depends on how the beneficiaries adjust their consumption in response to it, and which can after all potentially impact only calorie intake and no other causes of death.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swaminathan Aiyar also scuttled Sen\u2019s pretentions by taking up Sen on his own calculations. Using figures for losses in the public distribution system caused by leakages and graft, he calculates that the Food Security Bill \u2013 which Sen claimed cost 1,000 lives per week due to non-implementation, or around 50,000 lives per annum \u2013 would cost at least Rs 50,000 crore more even according to official estimates.<\/p>\n
Asks Aiyar: \u201cEven if the Bill saves 50,000 lives, it will cost an additional Rs 50,000 crore. Aren\u2019t there cheaper ways of saving lives than Rs 1 crore per head?\u201d<\/p>\n
(Read Arvind Subramanian\u2019s full Business Standard article here)<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.firstpost.com\/ economy\/food-bill-amartya- sens-charlatan-economics- debunked-again-944451.html? utm_source=frontpagepicks&utm_ medium=hp<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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