Amartya Sen lying to the FT

The FT has a sympathetic article on Amartya Sen's new memoir which stresses his recurrent battle with mouth cancer.  Perhaps, as Rousseau and Dr. Johnson have pointed out, nothing concentrates the writer's mind so much as the knowledge that death is imminent. Sen's work- though of an abstract and mathematical type- has always had a literary quality which set it apart from that of others in the same field. 

But, a devotion to literature is not without an 'opportunity cost'. One may be too ready to believe one's own confabulations. Paranoia beckons. Moreover, people think you might just be a big fat liar even if you pretend to be using statistics and advanced mathematical methods.

Consider the following-

Sen resigned from Nalanda in 2015 after Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP had taken office and blocked money to a university that it suspected was anti-Hindu.

This isn't what Sen said in his resignation letter. He mentions President Pranab Mukherjee- who belonged to the Congress Party- as being dilatory. He does not say any money had been 'blocked'. Why? Because it wasn't true.

This is the text of Sen's resignation letter to the Board.

19 February 2015


I am writing to you on a subject relating to the governance of Nalanda University in which all of us have been very deeply involved. As you know, at its last meeting on January 13-14, 2015, the Board decided unanimously (in my absence - I had recused myself – leaving George Yeo to chair the Board meeting) that I should be asked to serve as Chancellor of Nalanda University for a second term, when my present term expires in late July.

So, Sen resigned before his term expired. Economic theory explains why being a 'lame duck' occupant of an office (i.e. one who, it is common knowledge, can't continue to hold it) reduces its effectiveness and efficiency. Why did Sen not allow things to take their course? The Government would have had the headache of finding some other candidate and would probably have preferred to maintain the status quo. 

The unanimity was, I was pleased to be told, firm and enthusiastic, coming from all members of the Board , which – as you know – consists of representatives from different Asian countries (including China, Japan, Singapore and others), in addition of course to Indian academics and professionals.

Sadly, the board don't seem to have told Sen that a new VC was needed. Gopa Sabharwal didn't have the skill-set for the job. Had Sunaina Singh- or someone similarly experienced and high powered- been put in charge, Nalanda might have kept its sheen. Obviously, if Sabharwal was Manmohan's choice, then Nalanda had to keep her so long as Singh was PM. But they should have got shot of her the moment Singh was turfed out of office. 

However, the decision of the Governing Board becomes operational, according to the Nalanda University Act of Parliament, only after the Visitor of the University (the President of India, ex-officio) gives his assent to the decision. I understand that the Board’s decision was conveyed to the Visitor in mid-January, immediately after the meeting of the Governing Board of the Nalanda University, drawing his attention to the urgency of the matter, since the planning and implementation of new teaching and research arrangements are proceeding rapidly in the newly functioning University.

So, only a month had passed since the file was sent to the President. Sen still had five months to go as Chancellor. 

More than a month has passed since then, and it now seems clear that the Visitor has been unable to provide his assent to the Governing Board’s unanimous choice, in the absence of the Government’s approval. The Governing Board has not been favoured with a reply to its request, either from the President’s office or from the Ministry of External Affairs. As Board members are aware, our Visitor – President Pranab Mukherjee – has always taken a deep personal interest in the speedy progress of the work of Nalanda University, and given that, we have to assume that something makes it difficult – or impossible – for him to act with speed in this matter.

The Government said that the Board had not sent the approved minutes of the Board meeting. Sen said this had been sent a fortnight earlier- so, in other words, the delay was only of a fortnight. The problem was that the minutes were draft minutes, not approved minutes.  

Non-action is a time-wasting way of reversing a Board decision, when the Government has, in principle, the power to act or not act.

The Government did indeed have the power to act but only by due process of law. It needed approved minutes, not draft minutes.  

This, as you might recollect, also happened to the revised Statutes that the Governing Board passed unanimously last year. Many of these Statutes (including the one pertaining to the Chancellor’s term of office) also never received formal acceptance or rejection from the Ministry of External Affairs, which had the role of coordinating with the Visitor’s office.

Yet, the amendment act was passed in March 2014. The name of the Foreign Service officer concerned is mentioned in it. Clearly revised Statues were formally accepted. 

It is hard for me not to conclude that the Government wants me to cease being the Chancellor of Nalanda University after this July, and technically it has the power to do so.

But, if so, why resign in February? Sen, it seems, can not just read the mind of the Government, he also feels obliged to do whatever will make them happy!  

This delay as well as the uncertainty involved is leading, in effect, to a decisional gap, which is not helpful to Nalanda University’s governance and its academic progress.

If some harm had been caused why not mention precisely what that harm actually was? Since Sen was not involved in the running of Nalanda, we can't accept his assertion that there was a 'decisional gap' because it could only be hearsay. He needed to give at least one example of the harm he refers to. 

I have, therefore, decided that in the best interest of Nalanda University, I should exclude myself from being considered for continuing as Chancellor of Nalanda University beyond this July, despite the unanimous recommendation and urging of the Governing Board for me to continue.

The best interest of a University are served by Chancellors who help them become better. Sen was right to resign. He hadn't helped Nalanda at all.  

I take this opportunity also to thank the Governing Board very warmly for its confidence in me.

As you would also remember, there was considerable disquiet among Board members about the Government’s evident unwillingness to appreciate the international character of Nalanda University and to pay appropriate attention to the multi-country Governing Board of Nalanda.

Nalanda did not have an international character. It was a White Elephant financed by the Govt. of India.
Prior to August 2016, India contributed Rs 684.74 crore (about a 100 million dollars) for the construction of the university, China and Australia granted 1 million USD each, Thailand gave 1,32,000 USD and Laos contributed 50,000 USD. After that date all expenditure was by the Indians. What happened was that the Japanese had spoken airily of giving a hundred million, or even a billion, dollars. This was credible because the Japanese had already built a highway and a monastery and a pilgrim hostel in that area. They could have used Nalanda to train the management cadre in their car and other factories in India. China stumped up some cash so as to counter Japan. But once it became clear that the Japanese weren't going to give any money, it became obvious that the place would be a moribund White Elephant for which the Indians, and the Indians alone, would have to pay. This is why the relevant legislation linked representation on the Governing Board to financial contribution. Sen had got it into his head that the Indians would pay while foreigners got to make decisions. The wonder is that Sen didn't demand that the Taliban and ISIS get Departments to themselves at Nalanda from where, protected by diplomatic immunity, they could wage war on India. Sen's lack of generosity in this respect is truly shameful.

In particular, the Governing Board was kept completely in the dark about an attempted unilateral move by the Government to rapidly reconstitute the entire Board, and to do this in violation of some of parts of the Nalanda University Act (reflected especially in the letters that have already been sent out to foreign governments, departing from the provisions of the Act as it now stands).

If the Government was acting in an ultra vires manner, Sen's duty was to challenge their actions in a court of law. Why did he resign and run away instead? 

I write this letter with a heavy heart since re-establishing Nalanda has been a life-long commitment for me (as it is important also to you). While classes have very successfully started, on a small scale, in two Schools (the School of History and that of Environment and Ecology), we are, as you know, in the process of planning other Schools, including a School of Economics, a School of Public Health, and a School of Buddhist Studies, Philosophy and Comparative Religion, and also of augmenting the intake of students.

They had about 20 students- though some ran away. 

I have been personally much occupied with this planning, but I will, of course, pass on the work-in-progress to the Vice-Chancellor.

I am also sad, at a more general level, that academic governance in India remains so deeply vulnerable to the opinions of the ruling Government, when it chooses to make political use of the special provisions. Even though the Nalanda University Act, passed by the Parliament, did not, I believe, envisage political interference in academic matters, it is formally the case – given the legal provisions (some of them surviving from colonial days) - that the Government can turn an academic issue into a matter of political dispensation, if it feels unrestrained about interfering. As a proud and concerned citizen of India, I take this particular occasion to communicate my general disquiet in public, which is why I am openly sharing this letter.

The problem here is that Sen, as Chancellor, had a duty to bring a law suit against the Government if it is really true that they had acted in an ultra vires manner. 'Disquiet' may be felt by anyone. Something more than expressions of disquiet are expected from the senior-most office holder in a public Institution.  

Why does the FT say that Modi blocked money due to Nalanda till Sen resigned? From where could they have got such an idea? There is no mention of any such thing in any article published on this issue. On the other hand, there are allegations that Sen had demanded 'diplomatic immunity' for Nalanda staff (even if they were Indian citizens) and that Pranab Mukherjee had put his foot down. This was explained as a tiff between Mukherjee and the PMO. The allegation was that Manmohan's daughter's chums had been given lucrative positions at Nalanda despite the fact that they had no relevant qualifications. 

The Indian Express reported, in Feb 2014, that Sen had threatened to resign so as to get the Congress Government to release more money for his White Elephant. 

The government’s dream Nalanda University project has run into trouble with Chancellor Amartya Sen threatening to resign after the finance ministry raised pointed queries on the financial management of this mega revival plan. The crisis, which has been simmering for a while, is believed to have turned ugly just before general elections are to be announced. At its crux is a massive Rs 2,727 crore (about 400 million dollars- double the amount for building an IIT capable of teaching 10,000 students)  financial support package to the university over a period of 12 years. The finance ministry’s Department of Expenditure has asked the Ministry of External Affairs, the nodal ministry for the project, the reasons why government rules should not apply to the project. The university is yet to begin functioning fully, and its campus is still under construction in Rajgir. It has a small office in Delhi for the vice-chancellor and faculty members and aims to start its academic session this year. The provocation for the crisis, sources said, was the huge expenditure being incurred on maintaining the governing body of the university, known earlier as the Nalanda Mentor Group, as well as the tax-free salaries to the tune of $80,000 dollars per year to some of the top functionaries of the university. Faculty salary packages range around $50,000-55,000 per year. Upset by these queries, Sen – who is part of the 12-member governing body – conveyed to the MEA at the highest levels that he would resign if such objections were not opposed and quashed, source said. He is learnt to have given a similar message to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Planning Commission. Taken aback, the government is said to be looking at some of the amendments to the Nalanda University Act that could possibly grant full financial autonomy and also a permanent tenure to the university top brass. The university’s argument has been that full autonomy must mean complete financial independence. But since the government is putting much of the money, the finance ministry feels there has to be oversight and accountability – a view that has takers even in the MEA.

In other words, Sen threatened to resign even when Congress was in power simply so as to extort money from a poor country for a White Elephant vanity project. A year later he actually went ahead and resigned. This was a smart move. Students at Nalanda were soon reporting that they were being sexually harassed or that they could not even get yoghurt to eat!

What of the next claim made in the FT article?- 

Modi’s government denied Nalanda permission to celebrate Buddha’s birthday, even though the philosopher-prince gave the world a creed that was quintessentially Indian.

This is utterly mad! Hindus consider Buddha an avatar of Vishnu. They gladly celebrate Buddha Jayanti. Modi has always used his Vesak (Buddha purnima) addresses to highlight important issues- e.g. COVID safety precautions.

A few years ago, Sen was to appear on the BBC’s Hard Talk programme and noticed he was described on the teleprompter as a “Hindu scholar”. “I said: ‘Are you going to take this off, or shall I leave?’ They took it out.”

Sen was interviewed by Zeinab Badawi- who is Sudanese-British.  She did her PPE from Oxford. It is unlikely that she thought of Sen as other than an Economist who had won the Nobel Prize and who had been associated with John Rawls.

The title of Sen’s book is drawn from a Tagore novel, The Home and the World,

which ends with Muslims killing Hindus of Sen's class. Tagore predicted the ethnic cleansing in Sen's ancestral East Bengal. 

which is about the complexities of India’s struggle against western domination that was also immortalised in a Satyajit Ray movie of the same name. To Sen, the title evokes the secular, intellectually curious and tolerant climate in which he was raised.

His people were ethnically cleansed from Dacca.  

Sen recalls visitors to the ashram included Eleanor Roosevelt, Chiang Kai-shek and, of course, Mohandas Gandhi, who was murdered by a Hindu nationalist.

Unlike Sen's people in East Bengal who were murdered by Muslims- unless they ran away.  

Today’s Indian rulers, Sen fears, are attempting to stamp out its tradition of openness.

Gandhi told Bihari Congressmen that he knew which of them had been killing innocent Muslims. But Gandhi would take no action- legal or political- against the guilty. Gandhi and Nehru presided over the worst slaughter of Muslims India has ever seen. The Indian Government stripped citizenship from Muslim refugees who wanted to return to their ancestral homes. It granted citizenship to non-Muslim refugees and continued to harass wealthy Muslims who stayed behind till they too left. That's what happened to Salman Rushdie's father- as his novel 'Midnight's Children' shows.  

The BJP is rewriting history to excise the secular legacy of the early Moghuls, such as Akbar, who had as many Hindus at court as Muslims, and, of course, Ashoka, who preached tolerance for all beliefs.

Ashoka is fine. Akbar isn't- more especially for Muslims because he introduced sajda to the throne and proclaimed a new Religion.  

“India has a long history of pluralism that is now under threat,” says Sen.

Sen doesn't appear very tolerant of Hindu nationalism.  

“Akbar’s court was thriving in the late 16th century when they were burning heretics in Rome’s Campo di Fiore.”

Actually Akbar put down 'heretical' sects- e.g. Madhavis- if they posed a danger to his rule. Even Aurangazeb didn't kill heretic Muslims unless they were viewed as politically dangerous. However, there can be no doubt that 'heresy' attracted high penalties in rural India.  

Sen attaches some of the blame to VS Naipaul, the late Nobel Prize-winning Trinidadian Indian, who depicted the history of India’s Muslim dynasties as a dark night of temple-razing oppression. “What Naipaul wrote was absolute nonsense,” says Sen. “A complex story has been simplified by a group of very determined people.”

Sen's own story features flight from his ancestral East Bengal. There isn't any thing very complex about that.  

Sen’s story as a cosmopolitan in the world has not lessened his sense of Indianness. Though he has lived abroad since 1971, he only has an Indian passport.

Because India does not permit dual citizenship because...then people like Rushdie could be Indian citizens! 

Before the pandemic, he would visit Shantiniketan up to five times a year, where he keeps a house (aided by a life-long right to free first-class travel on Air India — a massive perk that followed his Nobel award).

Air India turned into one big money-pit because of such largesse on the part of politicians.  

In the past few years, a heated debate has erupted about the legacy of British imperialism. Sen’s view is that India took a lot from Britain — “the powerful journalistic tradition”, “parliamentary debate” and “Shakespeare’s English”. But such upsides came in spite of the British empire, “which, at best, gave India very little of value”, rather than because of it. “You have to separate the two,” says Sen. “The empire denied India its freedoms.”

The reason Sen's ancestors supported the Brits was because British rule gave them more security and self-respect than Muslim rule. 

When Sen arrived at Cambridge in 1953, his landlady, Mrs Hangary, worried that his brown skin would stain the bath tub.

If we are to believe Sen. The trouble is we don't. Cambridge landladies discussed the various sorts of tenants they might get. Brown students had been studying at Cambridge for almost a hundred years by the time Mrs Hangary met Sen. 

By the end of his tenancy, she had become a campaigner for racial equality. “She went from racist to jihadi for equality,” says Sen, chuckling. “I adored Mrs Hangary.”


Almost half a century later, Sen became master of the college that gave the world Isaac Newton, Lords Byron and Tennyson, John Dryden, Bertrand Russell, Jawaharlal Nehru and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Tony Blair called Sen personally to persuade him to take the job. At the college meeting to decide the next master, the chair said: “Sen is the only person this year whom we might someday consequently regret not having elected.”

So the College followed a 'regret-minimizing' strategy. Shame Sen did not in his work on Choice theory. 

Sen, chuckling, adds: “This was considered a ringing endorsement. It was a masterclass in English understatement.”

Sen appears to be unaware that the 'regret' mentioned may have been associated with accusations of racism in years to come.  

The walls of his living room, to which, at glacial speed, we have long since returned, display a life of the mind. There are portraits of John Rawls, the Harvard political philosopher, who was arguably the most influential liberal theorist of the late 20th century, and Willard Van Orman Quine, the linguistic philosopher, each of whom were close friends (both painted by Rawls’s wife, Margaret).

Sen gave a joint course with Rawls and Arrow back in the late Sixties. This was quite an accolade. Sadly, we now consider both Rawls and much of Arrow to be stupid shite. Why? They didn't get that, because of Knightian uncertainty, regret-minimization is the only rational strategy. 

There is a Halo light that Sen uses to illuminate himself for Zoom. And there is a painting of Nalanda university by a Chinese artist. Somewhere in the house I imagine there must be parts of the ancient bicycle that Sen used to traverse West Bengal when he was researching the famine.

Sadly, that research was worthless.  Consider the following- 

This makes it appear that Sriniketan was a commercial enterprise. It was actually a philanthropic Institute of Rural Reconstruction staffed by trained agronomists and supported by Quaker and other charitable foundations. Tagore's son, Rathindranath, had qualified in Agricultural Science from Illinois in 1909. The reason Sen, who was ten or eleven when the famine was at its worst, does not remember much about it was because the Tagores and their supporters had been working hard to help the local people not just to grow more food but also to tackle malaria, cholera etc. It should also be pointed out that farm workers were given grain, oil, salt etc. as well as money payment and thus money wages might fall when the value of payment-in-kind went through the roof. 

Sen mentions the 'Agro-Economic Research for Eastern India'. He does not tell us that this was started in Shantiniketan in 1954. There is a good reason for the lacuna in the data set. War conditions made nonsense of the figures which in any case were not representative of the District- never mind the Province as a whole. 

Sen's readers- Americans and so forth- assume that the figures he quotes are official statistics properly compiled by responsible officials. The truth is they were just local account books kept by the good and kind people at Shantiniketan & Sriniketan. Where there were free markets in grain etc. they might give us a trend rate but not an actual figure for wages since good people don't pay the market clearing rate. They pay what they can afford. No doubt, there may be strings attached- e.g. the promise to abstain from liquor etc. However, during war time, these figures can't tell us about anything except the brave attempt by good people to ensure that kids like Sen didn't have to see starving people collapsing and dying around them.

Looking around, it strikes me that Sen is more than an economist, a moral philosopher or even an academic. He is a life-long campaigner, through scholarship and activism, via friendships and the occasional enemy, for a more noble idea of home — and therefore of the world.

But what he campaigns for is yet more pi-jaw and virtue signaling though this creates a big back-lash.  The problem with telling lies is that you get into the habit of telling bigger and bigger whoppers. Finally, nobody believes you. 

In this age of identity politics, this Bengali savant refuses to be defined by labels. “Home and the world are the same thing for me,” he says. “It always was.”

Why stop there? Say 'Death and Life are the same thing to me just like utile Truths and Stupid Lies'.  

John Maynard Smith showed that 'uncorrelated asymmetries'- e.g. things about yourself you can't easily change- are important because they dictate 'bourgeois strategies'- i.e. rules which give a rigid designation to rights and obligations holders- which turn out to be eusocial. Rawls thought there was some 'veil of ignorance' behind which perfect symmetry was restored. He didn't understand that if Smith and evolutionary biology are right, then every rational person would refuse to get behind a 'veil of ignorance'. Sen makes a similar mistake in his 'parable of the flute'. Still, both Rawls and Sen served a virtue signaling purpose till, quite suddenly, everybody discovered that their theories or ideas of Justice were 'anything goes'- i.e. any type of tyranny could be justified under their rubric. 

Armchairs are good as places to sit. But armchair philosophy involves shitting as much as sitting. The thing is a nuisance. It must be curbed. 

Amartya Sen on why India beat China in COVID response

Amartya Sen gave the following speech, comparing Indian and China, some 15 years ago. How does it hold up?

China and India are much in the news right now. The attention that they get these days in the West is partly concerned with some kind of a fear that they might take over jobs and work from Europeans and Americans. I shall not address that worry in particular, though I believe it to be largely misguided.

Clearly, Americans did not agree. 9 years after Sen said this, they elected Donald Trump. It is noteworthy that Biden too is promising that China won't overtake America on his watch. However, as Dilip Hiro points out- this is an unlikely outcome.  

Still, the fact remains, the US is big enough to reserve a lot of high value adding activity for domestic producers. It doesn't have to turn into a low wage satellite of China. 

Expansion of economic connections hardly ever hurt countries that have the privilege of being already ahead in education, training and socially supportive facilities.

Yet Holland fell behind Britain over the course of the long eighteenth century. Bengal was ahead of most parts of India when Sen was born. It has fallen behind many other parts of India because of an 'expansion of economic connections'. What determines whether you stay ahead or fall behind is what you do to take advantage of these improved connections. Sen's view is that there is some automatic mechanism which turns 'education and socially supportive facilities' into economic advancement. This is not the case. What matters is how 'education' and 'social support' is used. China used both wisely. India preferred to pamper non-STEM subject shitheads at places like JNU and Nalanda. It chose to bribe the poor rather than lift them out of poverty by making them more productive. The consequences of Sen-tentious policies are clearly observable. China has pretty much ended poverty and is challenging the US for the top spot. India, battered by COVID, may have to accept that it will never climb out of a lower 'middle income trap'.  

Whatever readjustment of trading pattern that the emergence and expansion of new economies may lead to need not worsen the situation of the pre-existing economic powers. Indeed, if these established economic giants (as Germany certainly is) play their cards well and choose economic and social policies that take note of the new economic realities, rather than trying to stick dogmatically to old patterns of trade, there can be much benefit from the economic opportunities of gainful exchange generated by the rapid development of newly industrializing countries, like China and India.

Germany certainly benefitted because its 'mittelstand' could export capital goods to China thanks to its going into the Euro undervalued and because of its own Growth and Stability pact with Labour- i.e. cost push inflation was contained- as well as interventions in the Housing market, etc. However, as Merkel is currently lamenting, it did not maintain strategic spare capacity in some vital areas- e.g. pharma.  

I will, however, concentrate in this speech on some comparative analysis of what is happening in China and India today, seen in the perspective of the people of these countries themselves and the history of their interrelations over the last two thousand years.

This is foolish. There was no 'interrelation' save of a religious sort which ceased long ago after India came under Muslim rule. After that, the British Raj in India permitted Indian military resources to project force in China which benefitted a few Parsi and mercantile Hindu castes. But this had no wider effect whatsoever.  

I begin with citing a question that was asked by a Chinese about India: Is there anyone in any part of India who does not admire China?

The Chinese stopped asking any such question more than a thousand years ago. Why bring up the subject at this late hour?  

That question could well be asked today given the interest that economic and social achievements of China currently generate in India. The question, however, was actually asked by Yi Jing (or, I-Ching, as the name is sometimes spelt) in the seventh century, on his return to China after spending ten years in India. Yi Jing was one of many Buddhist scholars in the first millennium who spent a decade or more in India. The first Chinese scholar to write an elaborate account of his visit to India was Faxian [Fa-Hsien], who came to India on the dicult land route via Khotan in Central Asia, in 401 AD. After ten active years in India, Faxian returned by sea, sailing from the mouth of the Ganges or Hooghly (not far from present-day Calcutta). Faxian was also particularly interested in studying arrangements for public health care and the art of prolonging life. This was, in fact, a persistent subject of interest for visiting Buddhist scholars from China.

Some Chinese Christians also went to Baghdad to study Nestorian Christianity. They introduced paper making- which was very useful. It wasn't till the second half of the Nineteenth Century that, under British auspices, some Chinese settled in Sen's native Bengal. Only at that time did Chinese techniques of paper-making etc spread in India. There are only two or three Chinese innovations which found their way to the subcontinent. The lack of interconnection between these two civilizations is remarkable. 

It is also not implausible to argue that Buddha's own interest in morbidity, disability and mortality, which initially motivated young Gautama to leave his princely home in search of enlightenment (the word Buddha means `enlightened') gave the subject of public health a rather special status and standing in Buddhist scholarship.

But the religion disappeared in India many centuries ago- thanks to invaders of a particular Faith.  

In the reverse direction too, hundreds of Indian scholars- no 'scholars' came, only monks- came to China between the First century and the eleventh. Many of them settled there, and were engaged in a variety of activities, varying from translating Sanskrit documents into Chinese to working on mathematics and science

while being monks. Later, the Jesuits turned up and did have quite a big effect on Europe by their research. At one time, they had considerable influence in China.  

. An Indian astronomer called Gautama even became the president of the Board of Astronomy in China in the eighth century.

This is misleading. Gautama was born in China though an ancestor may have come from India- but, at that time, this would have included some parts of South East Asia 

Although Yi Jing might have been a little rash in doubting that any seventh-century Indian could have failed to admire China, the mutual viewing of each other was indeed a significant feature of the history of the two countries.

But ceased to be so many centuries ago.  

Sino-Indian cultural relations constitute an oddly neglected part of the heritage of the two countries.

Oddly? The thing ceased to exist a thousand years ago! 

The neglect is strange not only because of the light that these relations throw on the nature and evolution of Chinese and Indian civilizations (covering a large fraction of humanity), but also because of what it can tell us on such general subjects of contemporary contention as the history of `globalization' (how it has been a creative force) and the alleged `clash of civilizations' (on which, as it happens, more nonsense is said these days than on almost any other subject).

Getting conquered by Muslim Turks puts an end to 'cultural relations'. It also put an end to a Buddhist Civilization in India. 

 Yi Jing's seventh-century question about the general admiration for China in India, with which I began, seemed to many of us, in the second half of the twentieth century, to be extra-ordinarily relevant to our times.

This cretin thought setting up an International University in some rural shithole in Bihar was a good idea. Things which were 'extraordinarily' relevant to Sen, turned out to be wholly irrelevant for everybody else.  

Watching from the subcontinent, the emergence of post-revolutionary China appeared to millions of Indians to be the trail-blazing contemporary event, pointing the way to the future.

Nope. That the trail-blazing event was the Bolshevik Revolution. A Bengali, M.N Roy, was tasked with sparking off a similar revolution in China in the Twenties. He turned out to be utterly useless. He ran back to India knowing that a British jail cell would be safer than a Stalinist Gulag. During the Second World War, the guy kept begging the Viceroy for a 'subsidy'.  

As the early reports of massive gains in living conditions (including life expectancy) in China became widely discussed in India, the comparative picture formed the basis of one line of persistent criticism of Indian public policy in general and its comparative neglect of basic education and basic health care in particular.

Did these cunts actually go out to the villages and set up schools and so forth? Nope; they just went on criticizing- preferably from the comfort of an Ivy League campus. Meanwhile, the RSS did set up schools and voluntary Clinics and so forth. That's why India is now ruled by a RSS man from a very humble background. Meanwhile Oxbridge trained Commies are remembered only for the harm they did to the Indian economy.  

Even though this criticism was not very successful in getting Social attention until very recently,

because only Sonia Gandhi was foreign enough to think Sen-tentious academics weren't virtue signaling cretins 

it has been an important part of the intellectual discontent in India over many decades. Since 1979, China has carried through market-oriented economic reforms in a massive scale, with tremendous success in some fields,

some fields? All fields. 

such as raising rates of economic growth. This too has not been without impact on India. There is little doubt that India's economic liberalization, starting in 1992, was directly influenced by China's early success in that direction.

Edwin Lim, the World Bank official who helped the Chinese in the Eighties, came to India around then. He discovered that it paid better for academics and 'activists' to block Indian economic growth because they could get funds from International Foundations. Thus 'incentive compatibility' was lacking for proper economic policies based on pure mimetics- not Sen-tentious shite. 

The Indian reforms have been relatively less extensive so far,

they were blocked by Sen-tentious cretins- though to be fair, the Commies were worse.  

though things are changing quickly, but a basic problem is the continued underdevelopment of social opportunities in India, compared with those in China, especially in the field of school education.

Why? Teachers in Government Schools count the votes. Thus they can't be sacked even if they don't show up for work. Thanks to cretins like Sen, the private sector provision of Education and Health faces high compliance costs. These can be evaded only if Schools and Hospitals are run by thugs. Sen-tentious policies can't prevent development sponsored by thugs. Stabbing the Government inspector is as effective as, Communist style, shooting Teachers who don't turn up for work. 

Indeed, it is often not adequately recognised how much the Chinese economic performance in the `post-reform' period has benefited from earlier - distinctly `pre-reform' - expansions of social opportunities (especially in basic education, but also in epidemiology and land reform).

But the clinching factor was the one child policy and the internal passport system. This meant the benefits of development were reaped by those who actually developed themselves. Sen, however, comes from a long line of bien pensant Bengalis who believed that the cake should be divided up fairly before it was baked.  

Indian higher education, however, is quite extensive (India still has many more University educated persons, even in absolute numbers, than China does),

but it is shit. Unlike China, India thought PhDs in shite subjects- including Sen-tentious Economics- raised productivity. They also thought that giving a guy an Engineering degree turned him into an engineer even if he couldn't speak English or tell a spanner from a spade.  

and its technical training in high technology (from informational analysis to nuclear physics and biochemistry) is well developed,

because Indian planners forgot to forget to fuck up the associated industries before they got off the ground. Sad.

which is reflected in India's success in some high-tech sectors in the world economy (such as computer programming and software, information technology, and pharmaceuticals).

Why hasn't the Govt. been able to fuck up these fields? The answer is that it knows it will face a fiscal and balance of payments crisis if it does so. As happened in 1992, the country would face bankruptcy- i.e. it would have to reform or else simply go under.  

This has made Indian economic performance quite impressive seen in comparative terms with the rest of the world, but it has still not allowed India to have an economic expansion as fast as China.

Because of stupid, paternalistic, Land and Labor and umpteen other Laws, not to mention the pervasive 'Inspector Raj'.  

Developing a wider base of basic education

which involves tackling the vested interests of Trade Unions- in particular those of Government teachers 

and achieving a further reduction of bureaucratic barriers

which involves tackling the vested interests of the bureaucracy which is deeply corrupt 

can make important contributions to making the Indian development even more rapid than it is now.

India could simply free everything up, privatize schools etc, and just use digital cash transfers to cushion the shakeout effect. 

There is, however, a danger that in trying to identify what India can learn from China, and also the converse (on which more presently), too much focus may be put on the outstanding nature of China's rates of economic growth.

Tardean mimetics means imitating a guy similar to yourself who is doing better. Development is about removing barriers to Tardean mimetics not 'identifying what x can learn from y' and then worrying that 'too much focus' may be given to things which one holds to be vulgar or repugnant. 

Scepticism about growth per se is not new, neither in China, nor in India. One can even interpret, in that line, the Chinese writer Wang An-Shah's doubts, expressed in the eleventh century, in his poem, Casual Inspirations on a Cold Mountain: Having one is to have two, Having three is to have four, One, two,three, four, and five, Having them all, what does it really matter? Despite these doubts, Wang (a Buddhist administrator in Sung China) worked hard, as a leading reformer, to improve people's lives in ways that goes beyond merely `having' more and more of ordinary things, and concentrating instead on achievements that `really matter.' 

Sen is speaking of Wang Anshi who did compose 20 poems in the 'Cold Mountain' style. He made the mistake of lending to farmers in an unsustainable manner and was forced out of office during a famine. Fiscal policy can't be about fostering 'capabilities'. It has to be about balancing the books. During a food availability deficit, you have to have money in the treasury to buy food from other areas. If you have leant out all your money, then the borrowers starve along with everybody else. 

Sen, typically, doesn't get the important economic fact about the poet he quotes.

In this light, it is interesting to examine the comparative picture in China and India - and what each can learn from the other - about things that do `really matter,' in particular what Yi Jing called the art of `prolonging life.'

through alchemy 

This is indeed a good focus for some useful comparisons. As I mentioned earlier, Faxian, Yi Jing and other early visitors from China to India were particularly interested in health care, treating diseases, and more generally in the `art of prolonging life.'

No kidding! The Emperor wanted to be immortal- not by doing good deeds and winning renown- but by not actually dying.  

Not only has this been one of the historical areas of comparative interest in China and India, but also life expectancy and health are widely recognised these days as good general indicators of comparative success.

Ceteris paribus, not being dead or very very ill is considered to be better than being dead or at death's door. What an amazing discovery! 

The most extensive championing of this perspective can be found in the series of yearly reports called Human Development Reports produced by the United Nations. So what is the comparative story in this field in the comparative picture of India and China? In the middle of the twentieth century, post-revolution China and newly independent India had about the same life expectancy at birth, less than 40 years or so. But the Chinese leaders were immediately more successful in expanding health care and life expectancy at birth than their sleepy Indian counterparts were.

Why? Because they didn't have a useless Planning Commission dominated by Bengali statisticians. They were prepared to sack or shoot teachers who didn't teach and Doctors who ran away from their assigned Clinics. In India, as Jack Prager- an actual Medical Doctor- records, there is no constituency for expanding educational or health budgets because voters can see for themselves that teachers don't teach and Doctors don't live where they are supposed to live. They can use their 'pull' to get appointments and will use the courts to delay being terminated from employment. In other words, they keep getting paid without doing any work.  

By the time the economic reforms were introduced in China in 1979, China had a lead of 14 years or more over India, with the Chinese life expectancy at birth at 68 years while the Indian was less than 54.

Why? Unlike China, which has only a very small proportion of culturally non-Han peoples, India has very large culturally non-Hindu populations. The Caste Hindu is comparable to the Han Chinese. Thrift, sobriety, enterprise etc. are values both share. Mimetic effects can broadcast these values- but only if artificial barriers to mimetics are removed.  

China did, in fact, experience during this period a disastrous famine, which is estimated to have killed between 23 and 30 million people, whereas India has not experienced any such famine since its independence from British rule in 1947.

But Bangladesh did- though it was a Democracy with a Free Press. Sen keeps pretending that Democracy has some magical power against Famine. Yet, on two occasions, during Sen's own lifetime, popularly elected Governments in Bengal presided over horrendous Famines.  

I have discussed elsewhere that the Chinese famine was strongly linked with a lack of democracy.

But in Bengal, the formation of an elected Government has been associated with the worsening of a food availability deficit by corrupt politicians who, however, hold power Democratically.  

Even when people were dying by tens of millions each year, the mistaken policies of the so-called Great Leap Forward were not corrected for three years. The government was immune from criticism, since there were no opposition parties, no free elections, no independent newspapers and media, and no free speech.

Mujibur Rehman was so immune to criticism he scrapped Democracy. But he wasn't immune to a bullet. If some patriot had simply shot Mao, or poisoned his soup, there would have been no big Chinese famine. 

In contrast, it is not hard to see why there have been no famines in India since independence.

Bengalis don't run things. If people start dying of starvation, President's rule will be declared and the Army will be sent in to set up relief camps.  

No democratic government can expect to get re-elected after a famine,

Nonsense! Shurawardy did get re-elected. Mujib too would have been re-elected after he lifted the Emergency- if not immediately then, like Indira, soon enough.  

and no democratic government can easily face an independent media and the criticism of opposition parties in a famine-ravaged country.

Rubbish! All the Government has to do is make a scapegoat of some mercantile minority community. Throw in some ethnic cleansing, and you get re-elected by a a landslide. As for the 'free Press', beat a few reporters and threaten a couple of Editors and see how quickly they fold.  

However, the working of democracy, which is almost effortlessly effective in preventing famines

except in Bengal if elected Bengalis are running things 

, is far less immediate in politicizing regular but nonextreme undernourishment and ill health.

Sen was still in India when the Commies tried to make hunger a big issue in Bengal. They were ignored. Bengalis believed Bengal was over-populated. They thought it a good thing if ten percent of the population simply starved to death. Mao justified the Famine in the same manner. He also offered Chinese women to Kissinger. Perhaps the Americans had some use for this baby making machines.

The extensive rewards of political freedom and democracy depend very much on the vigor with which it is practised.

The rewards of any activity depend on the activity actually being performed. Vigor means effort. Reward is proportionate to effort. Again, we are stunned by Sen's great discovery.  

As far as regular mortality rates are concerned, India has tended to obtain much less - at least until recently - from the opportunity offered by democratic politics

because what Sen sees as opportunity is viewed by the public as mere 'opportunism'- e.g. the Commies making a campaigning issue out of hunger in a Bengal where the median voter was bleakly Malthusian.  

than China has been able to get from the political commitment of its authoritarian rulers (including Mao's own general dedication to enhancing living conditions, despite the big policy mistakes he made during the famine). For the decades preceding economic reforms in China in 1979, the trend rate of expansion of life expectancy there (including all the famine years) was more than twice as fast as that in India.

China's famine probably represented a Darwinian 'shake out'. The truth is there was probably more unreported infanticide which meant that official figures are inflated. One reason Cuba had very good statistics in this respect- apart from the fact that Cuba exports Medical Services in order to pay its way- is because there are a lot of suspicious looking 'late-term' miscarriages.  Doctors and Public Health officials massage the figures to avoid getting a bullet in the back of the head. 

I must now continue the comparative story beyond 1979. Over the last two decades China has had an altogether exceptional record of rapid economic growth. The Indian economy has grown rapidly too, but not at all as fast as the Chinese. But how have they fared in terms of promoting life expectancy? Here we run into an odd conundrum. Despite China's much faster rate of growth since the economic reforms, the rate of expansion of life expectancy in India has been about three times as fast, on the average, as that in China.

There is no fucking conundrum here. It is obvious that there are diminishing returns here because senescence is written into our genes. Once you have life expectancy of 70, it is very difficult to push the dial. The other thing is affluence reduces life expectancy- at least initially. Cuban health improved during the 'famine' because people ate less and took more exercise and couldn't smoke or drink as much. 

China's life expectancy, which is now about 71 years, compares with India's of 64 years, and the life-expectancy gap in favor of China, which was 14 years before the Chinese reforms, has now been halved to only 7 years.

It is now 5 years. But COVID might change that.  

Note must, however, be taken of the fact that it gets increasingly harder to expand life expectancy further as the absolute level rises, and it could be argued that perhaps China has now reached a level where further expansion would be very diffcult. But that reading is hard to sustain. At the time of economic reforms, when China had a life expectancy of about 68 years, the Indian state of Kerala had a slightly lower life expectancy - around 67 years. By now, however, Kerala's life expectancy is estimated to be around 76 years, which is very considerably above China's 71.

Now they are about level. Kerala, like Cuba, exports medical services. That is why it is an outlier.  

While the Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai can outmatch the state of Kerala, nearly all Chinese provinces have much lower life expectancy than Kerala. Indeed, if we look at specific points of vulnerability, infant mortality rate in China has fallen very slowly since the economic reforms (almost none at all in the last decade), whereas it has continued to fall very sharply in Kerala. While Kerala had roughly the same infant mortality rate as China - 37 per thousand - at the time of the Chinese reforms, Kerala's present rate of 10 per thousand is only a third of the Chinese infant mortality rate of 30 per thousand (where it has stagnated over the last decade). 

Kerala, thanks to free treatment of congenital heart defects, is now around 7 while China is at about 10. Obviously, this is because both underwent demographic transition and are ageing societies. India's is about 32 because backward States still have above replacement fertility.  

Does this indicate that economic growth does not help to enhance life expectancy?

No. 

There is nothing to suggest this; economic growth does contribute to the enhancing of living conditions, including longevity. However, as China's own pre-reform success shows, other factors, such as public policy of health care and educational expansion, can also make a radical difference.

No. What made a dramatic difference was the one child policy and the Hukou passport system. 

But there is considerable complexity in the experience of China since the economic reforms of 1979.

No there isn't. The thing is as clear as daylight. The Chinese imitated their more successful neighbors. Most Indians weren't allowed to. That's why Bangladesh may overtake India in per capita terms. Getting rural girls into big big factory dormitories is the only solution to Malthusian agricultural involution.  

There is clearly some diffculty with the `reach' of the benefits of economic reform in China, despite its astounding rate of economic growth.

It is now obvious that China did the sensible thing. First it grew the economy by concentrating on infrastructure and supply side bottlenecks. Then, once it could afford to do so, it moved the very poor out of shitty conditions by actually physically moving them from mountain tops into proper apartment buildings with electricity and running water and all the mod cons. 

Sen-tentious economists prefer to divide up a theoretical cake before anything is baked. 

There are three distinct problems of `reach' here. First, even within the economic field, the poverty-removing character of Chinese economic expansion was much sharper in the early post-reform period than it is today.

No. Then and now, China did smart things which helped the average chap. Only when it got hung up on redistribution and fucking over the 'reactionary' elements did it do stupid shite. India, for highly moral and mathematical reasons, did stupid shit. It still has too many bien pensant activists and academics ready to block Development where ever the thing rears its vulgar head.  

While the early reforms showed an astonishing jump in rural production and incomes,

because there was no Civil or other War.  

from the late 1980s the focus of growth has been much more urban,

The Chinese, like the Soviets, ensured their Cities didn't become Calcutta level shitty by tightly controlling migration and according much lower entitlements to migrant workers. 

largely related to increasing global integration of the China's industrial economy. It cannot, of course, be doubted that this global integration and the related expansion of urban incomes have brought many rewards to the Chinese people. And yet the poverty-reducing character of Chinese economic growth, while still quite firm, has relatively slackened.

Because you have to bake the cake before worrying about the fairness of how it is sliced up.  

Furthermore, there has been a big surge in Chinese economic inequality, which is brought out by many empirical studies.

Higher inequality is good provided people are free to pursue Tardean mimetic targets.  

However, China's slow growth in life expectancy and stagnation in infant mortality are not only the result of the worsening reach of its economic growth. It also relates to the social and political reach of the reforms. So, the second factor to note is that along with the political change that ushered in the economic reforms came a slackened social commitment to public health care.

The clear lesson, 15 years later is 'fuck social commitment to public health care'. Increase the resource base. Tell Amartya Sen and his ilk to fuck off. Development only happens when Development Economists are ignored. Marx said 'to each according to his contribution'. Let people contribute more by making sure they are rewarded for contributing. Disintermediate virtue signaling gobshites.  

It led, in particular, to the eschewal of the automatic and free health insurance provided, before the reforms, by the state, or the collectives or cooperatives in rural areas, which also poured resources directly into public health care.

Free means shitty. It is better to pay for things you need. Otherwise they won't exist when you need them.  

There was now a need to buy a private health insurance at one's own cost (except when provided by the employer, which happens only in a small minority of cases). Interestingly, this significantly retrograde movement in the coverage of health care received little public resistance - as it undoubtedly would have met in any multi-party democracy like India.

Because 'opportunistic' virtue signaling isn't rewarded by gaining corrupt rents. However, if Indian Governments sternly curb nuisances created by opportunistic politicians creating 'rent a mob' mass movements, then they would be re-elected. Indira would have been re-elected but for 'forcible sterilization'. North Indians don't ask for much but they do ask the Government to keep its paws off their testicles.  

It is very hard to think that an established public facility of great value to people

but China's rise shows free health care is shitty health care. Having to rely on a shitty vital service is of great harm to people.  

could be dispensed so easily in a country where the opposition had an effective voice.

The opposition, in Obama's America, had an effective voice. That's how come rich America doesn't have what parts of poor, poor, India does have. But America is still where those poor Indians would rather live. 

The denial of that facility certainly has had a role in the slowing down of the progress of longevity.

No. It had a role in increasing longevity. That is what the figures say.  

Third, democracy also makes a direct contribution to health care in bringing social failures into public scrutiny.

No. Indian people know why the Public Health and Education System is dysfunctional in their locality. They also understand that reform is politically and legally infeasible. So they prefer to let these things wither on the vine while paying for education and health care wherever possible.  

India's health services are quite terrible - I have discussed how defective they are in my joint books with Jean Drèze, in particular in India: Development and Participation (published in Acceptance Speech 21 2002), and quite recently, I had the dubious privilege of presenting in a news interview in India the depressing findings of the first health report of the Pratichi Trust (a trust I was privileged to set up with the Nobel money that came my way some years ago).

Sen & Dreze wrote worthless shite. Jack Prager, an actual Doctor, has disclosed the reality and how to fix it. But nobody listens to Prager. Instead, Bengali cretins will continue to get Nobel Prizes for RCT or other arcane Statistical work which appears 'counter-intuitive' because it is methodologically crap.  

But the possibility of such intense criticism is, of course, also a social opportunity to make amends.

This cretin, thinks intensely criticizing things has a magical effect. I intensely criticize the economy and the environment on a regular basis. This hasn't helped me any.  

Indeed, the persistent reporting of the dreadful state of Indian health services is, ultimately, a source of India's dynamic strength.

Sen thinks he has made India stronger by 'persistently reporting' that it is a shithole ruled by Fascists.  

The informational and incentive roles of democracy, working mainly through open public discussion, can be pivotally important for the reach of public policy.

Sen believes that saying 'Oi, people are starving' when everybody can see this is so is somehow helpful. It isn't. 

Anyway, when Sen first got into this game back in the Seventies, you had dusky Economists pretending their shithole countries were actually ahead of America. Cuba, of course, was paradise. The problem with this wonderful discovery was that those dusky Economists showed a high propensity to remain in the West rather than go back home- or to Cuba.  

As was mentioned earlier, even the Chinese famines of 1958- 61 reflected the absence of a democratic engagement,

if so, what did the Bangladesh famine reflect?  

but more recently the easy abandonment of public health insurance as well as the immunity from criticism that Chinese health services often enjoy could be linked directly to the lack of multi-party politics.

China's success is directly linked to the lack of multi-party politics. It could be a bigger shit-show than India. Indeed, in the Thirties, it was. Thankfully, both Taiwan and China became one-party states and began their rise. At a later point, Taiwan became multi-party. Still, the fact remains, that those 'Tigers' which rose up did so, at least initially, by authoritarian means. 

It is the limitation of this role that came most sharply to attention in the context of the SARS epidemic during 2002-3. Although SARS cases first appeared in Southern China in November 2002 and caused many fatalities, information about this new deadly disease was kept under a lid until April 2003. Indeed, it was only when that highly infectious disease started spreading to Hong Kong and Beijing that the news had to be released, and by then the epidemic had already gone beyond the possibility of isolation and local elimination. The lack of open public discussion evidently played a critically important part in the spread of the SARS epidemic.

How has 'open public discussion' helped the US or Europe or India cope with COVID? US deaths are about 0.17 percent. That is ten times higher than India. But China's is 50 times lower than India's! The Economic cost too seems much lower in China. True, Taiwan and Japan have even lower rates without lockdown or much test & trace. It may be that previous exposure to Sars type viruses gives East Asians higher protection. But the fact remains, China's display of State capacity was extraordinary. These guys could build hospitals in a matter of days! The Communist party had its people ready and willing to take charge in every neighborhood. 

Covid came out of Sars- perhaps through 'gain of function' research in a Wuhan Lab. But China, with only 3 deaths per million, is miles ahead of the US which has 1,700 deaths.  

Fuck 'open public discussion' and the horse it rode in on. Taiwan did even better than China with just technical information being aggregated. Sen-tentious blathershites, howsoever credentialized, was disintermediated.

This is a small example, but the general penalty of the lack of competitive democracy is much more pervasive than that.

What the world has learned is that the penalty of competitive democracy is that you are 500 times more likely to die of a disease which originated in China if you live in the US rather than under the brutal tyranny of Chairman Xi.  

 India has learned much from China about economic policy and also about health care, especially from China's activist public commitment of the early post-revolutionary period.

No. India has learned by mimicing what is closer to home. There is no point saying 'the Chinese do x' because the Chinese Communist party waded through a sea of blood to gain absolute and complete power. The Indian National Conference came to power not by fighting but by sulking till the Brits decided to go home. 

On the other hand, the relevance of public communication and democracy is a general lesson that India can still offer to China.

Because China wants to attain, not an American standard of living but an Indian standard of barely surviving. 

The comparison with the state of Kerala is particularly interesting here.

Kerala had a large indigenous Christian community which eagerly embraced Western Education and Medicine. It started to use these high value adding services to pay for manufactured goods. Also, it was a remittance economy. However, whereas South Koreans laboring in the Gulf in the Seventies were investing in their own manufacturing sector, Keralites did not have that option. That is why South Korea overtook Kerala long ago. 

Kerala seems to have benefitted from its left-leaning democratic politics,

It benefitted from its powerful Churches being able to ally with muscular Nairs to fuck over the Commies when they tried to take over Christian Colleges and Schools to turn them to shit. 

It must be said, that the Kerala Commies- like the Kerala Muslim league- rejected ideology and became meritocratic and cadre based which is why Comrade Shailaja is such a good Health Minister and also why the CM may be re-elected.  

having been able to combine (1) the political commitment to social objectives which was typically favored in China and which has helped China to move forward quite early,

Whereas the lack of American political commitment to social objectives led to massive famine in the Sixties and Seventies.  

and (2) the benefits of public criticism - in particular more open scrutiny - that a multi-party democratic system provides in India.

Which is why India is now so much richer than China. 

The latter, on its own, would seem to have helped India to narrow the gap vis-a-vis China quite sharply.

Cretin! India was level with China in 1990. Twenty years later it had twice the per capita Income. Edward Lim initially thought India could grow faster than China. Then he discovered the power of the 'buddhijivi' and the determination of bien pensant activists and academics to prevent Development so as to get rewarded for being the 'Mother Theresa' of Econ, or Poli Sci, or Jurisprudence, or whatever.   

Despite all its inadequacies, the Indian health delivery arrangements have to be open to public criticism which a democratic system standardly fosters, and the fact that much is known about these inadequacies from criticisms in the press is itself a contribution to improving things.

No. If everybody knows a thing is shit but nothing changes no matter which party comes to power, then people just accept that they are shit out of luck.  

This opportunity is particularly forcefully seized in a state like Kerala with its high level of basic education and a strong tradition of political appraisal and critique.

But Kerala could only afford education and health care because it was a remittance economy. On the other hand, 'appraisal' and 'critique' did prevent it becoming a manufacturing hub so it was forced to be a remittance economy which in turn meant that education and health could flourish without 'Baumol Cost Disease' because the transfer earnings of employees in those two fields (who couldn't migrate for family reasons) were kept down.  

 

The effectiveness of critical public discussion is also reflected in the lower fertility rate in Kerala (without any regulation or compulsion) than in China,

because of very high population density. Had fertility not declined the whole place would be 'standing room only'.  

and the comparative absence of gender bias against women (the female male ratio in Kerala's population is 1.06, as in Europe and North America, not 0.94 as in China and 0.93 as in India as a whole).

Women get good jobs as nurses. This means visas to Canada and a chance for their husband to move too.  

If this diagnosis is correct, then we must conclude that in addition to the direct benefits from democratic practice (related to political freedoms and liberties),

which existed just as much in Sen's Bengal as in Kerala but which were associated with Bengal's relative decline 

China is losing other benefits from not having a vigorous democracy, which could be particularly effective given what China has already achieved in widespread basic education and general health care.

This is the root of Sen's fallacy. He thinks Democracy is a nice cherry on top of things. But, China's experience is that multi-party Democracy is a shit-show. It had its first provincial elections in 1909 and, as a Republic, its first General Election in 1912. What happened next was war-lordism, anarchy, big famines and then a Japanese invasion. After the War there were elections under a Democratic Constitution but the Commies defeated the KMT and took charge. That's when things started to look up.  

Oddly enough, looking back at history, it is the tradition of public criticism and irreverence, and the defiance of authority, which came with Buddhism from India

Nonsense! Confucius, Moh Tzu and countless other savants considered it their pious duty to criticize misconduct even if they paid for this with their lives. Buddhism was only rebellious where the people were rebellious. It is certainly not considered an 'irreverent' or 'defiant' force in 'Greater India' though, no doubt, in the Fifties it did take an anti-Imperialist tinge. But, it soon realized, Communism was the real enemy.  

that was singled out for a particularly strong chastisement in early anti-Buddhist criticisms in China. Fu-yi, a powerful Confucian leader, submitted in the seventh century the following complaint about Buddhists to the Tang Emperor (almost paralleling the contemporary ire of the Chinese authorities about the disorder generated by the present-day Falungong): Buddhism infltrated into China from Central Asia, under a strange and barbarous form, and as such, it was then less dangerous. But since the Han period the Indian texts began to be translated into Chinese. Their publicity began to adversely affect the faith of the Princes and filial piety began to degenerate. The people began to shave their heads and refused to bow their heads to the Princes and their ancestors. Fu-yi proposed not only a ban on Buddhist preaching, but also quite a novel way of dealing with the `tens of thousands' of activists, rampaging around in China. `I request you to get them married,' Fu-yi advised the Tang emperor, and `then bring up [their] children to fill the ranks of your army.' The emperor, we learn, refused to undertake this spirited programme of eliminating Buddhist defiance.

However, from time to time, both China and, in the second half of the Nineteenth Century, cracked down on Buddhism. It responded either by serving the national interest or perishing. In India, this religion proved incapable of fighting the Turks. So it vanished. 

Sen-tentious shite must vanish from India because it does not serve the national interest. Buddhism, however, is welcome provided it doesn't get too hung up with non-violence and preaching poverty as the best medicine for the soul.

China has embraced the world economy with amazing success, and from this India - like many other countries - has been learning a great deal, particularly in recent years.

Learning? Fuck off! Edward Lim turned up fresh from China and found willing collaborators in people like Montek Singh Ahluwalia. But bienpensant activists and academics found it more profitable to block vital reforms in the name of 'equity'. Buddhijivis and Andalonjivis have buggered Bharat.  

But there are lessons that can go in the other direction as well. If India has to carry its reforms further, and do better in basic school education and basic health care than it has done in the past, China too has to address the importance of public debating and discussion with a free media and the relevance of democratic politics.

Fifteen years later, we see that the opposite is the case. Learning shit doesn't help. Doing useful stuff is what matters. Lectures and Critiques are easy to deliver- but they crowd out first-order work of a utile type.  

Yi Jing's conclusion that each country has to learn something from the other is as true today as it was in the seventh century when that perceptive Chinese scholar made that remark.

Yi Jing was wrong. Mimicking the successful, not learning shite, is what matters.  Yiging himself imitated other Buddhist monks. He didn't just learn the theory of being a monk, he was an actual monk. How did he become so? Sen thinks it was by attending some lectures at some University. The truth is quite different. As a boy of 14, this guy imitated what the monks were doing and thus became one himself. Then, later on, he set off- as others before him had- to advance in the same manner that they had.

There is also a general lesson here about how global contacts can be helpful for different countries.

Only if mimicry is already occurring. Then 'global contacts' can reinforce existing mimetic effects and, if productivity rises, then a tipping point is reached. As happened between China and India, the pupil becomes the master. Indian Buddhists now use many texts which have come down to us only through Chinese sources. China's Nanhai Buddhist University will be a great source of soft power for it in places like Laos while Sen's Nalanda remains a backward and rustic place. 

That lesson may have some general relevance, beyond the particular experiences of China and India in particular

Time has shown there was no lesson here at all- just virtue signaling bullshit. Imitating the successful, not paying for more and more lessons, is what makes you successful. Also, if you like Buddhism so much, why don't you marry it? It will soon enough turn into a shrew and make derisive comments about your tiny dick. I'm not saying this happened to me. It is just a general observation on my part. Anyway, the thing could happen to anybody. It's all just a part of Life's rich tapestry. I bear no malice to any creed. Indeed, Socioproctology can be usefully learned by one and all. Online registration is now open. For the low low fee of $9.99, you could qualify in this subject and launch a lucrative career. Mind it kindly. Aiyayo.  

Philip Altbach & Research Universities as a panacea

Philip Altbach- the world's leading expert on Universities- and Pankaj Jalota (of Indraprastha) write in University World News 

It is true to say that India in 2020 does not have any world-class research universities.

So what? What matters is if world-class research, from which India benefits  disproportionately, is done somewhere- whether or not it is done on Indian soil. Research done in Mexico, because of certain unique geographical features it enjoys, may change the live of millions of Indian farmers. It is a good thing for India if Indian agronomists- like Sanjaya Rajaram- take Mexican citizenship and work there.

Germany pioneered both the research university and the research institute. The latter were more successful and prestigious. However, it appears that as R&D budgets rise, German research universities can hold their own. But a lot of this has to do with Germany's ability to attract and retain smart people from elsewhere in Europe. 

India, because of fiscal constraints and a dysfunctional bureaucracy, is looking at autonomous Research Universities which can grow and attract talent and funding more easily than existing Institutes- some of which have degenerated completely. 

Sadly, it appears that some policy makers are still obsessed with fooling rating agencies into thinking India has first class research Universities purely as a matter of satisfying vanity.

This sort of fraud harms Higher Education. 

Universities can waste money on what looks like world class research- or even put one or two academic super-stars on the payroll for cosmetic purposes- but this harms students and wastes resources. 

What determines whether research is done is the reward for innovation.  Where it is done depends on comparative or absolute advantage. 

Should India go in for Research Universities? No. More competing specialist Institutes is the way forward. Why? What worked in the past, will work in the future. What failed in the past will fail, ceteris paribus, in the future.

It does have several outstanding research institutes in various scientific fields.

 Why? Because they are tightly focused and can keep out the riff-raff. 

Speaking generally, Research should be kept separate from teaching unless you are training really smart kids who can start doing original research in a couple of years. But it should never be credentialised. Freeman Dyson didn't have a Doctorate. Plenty of cretins do. But Dyson could transform a field of which he had no previous experience and to which he arrived quite tangentially.

The Indian Institute of Statistics, Mahalanobis's baby, is the only 'Developing World' establishment which became the model for one in America. Sadly, its influence was, on balance, baleful for India's economic development. Research is a double edged sword. It can make stupidity seem a higher type of intelligence. Indeed, Indian Higher Education has often been an exercise in 'double-think'. This is useful if sycophancy is going to be your ticket to the gravy train.

It also has some excellent technology and management institutions – the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management. And a few outstanding public institutions, such as the Indian Institute of Science, and some excellent private initiatives such as Manipal, Ashoka, and a few others.

But none of these are comprehensive research universities

Which is why they aint utterly shit. 

To succeed, do more of what you already do well. Imitate what other similarly placed countries do- if you can. India can't do what China does- viz. beat woke nutters and chase them off campus. Also, don't create Nalanda type white elephants.  

that can compare with the best universities globally – or which are recognised by any of the global higher education rankings.

India can be easily recognized as a shit poor country. Why should it compare itself with wealthy countries?  

But India is not yet a scientific or research power. For India to be fully successful as a global scientific and intellectual force, it needs research universities.

No it does not. It needs professional Research Institutes which compete with each other and which try to take market share from foreign Institutes. One reason for this is that 'brain drain' is less likely where un-credentialized Researchers are locked into their existing Institute.  

Education and Research are completely separate activities. You can pretend otherwise by simply putting up a Research Institute under the umbrella of a University- but who are you actually fooling? 

This requirement has finally been recognised in several of the impressive initiatives proposed by the Government of India – most importantly the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, approved by the government in August, and programmes such as the Global Initiative of Academic Networks, the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) and several others.

India is, yet again, doing stupid shit. But it will soon run out of money so the stupid shit will get discontinued.  

A differentiated academic system

Research universities are necessarily a small but central part of a differentiated academic system.

They are unnecessary. Most 'research' at Uni is utterly shite. Delhi School of Econ turned to shit after it joined Delhi University. The Institute of Statistics resisted this urge and thus is less shite. 

India, which now has the second-largest student enrolment in the world, has a highly complex but poorly articulated academic system.

It has a shit system because it is as poor as shit and policy makers are as stupid as shit and Indian students, quite sensibly, don't give a shit about research or academic excellence or anything else which doesn't actually put more money in their pocket than they would otherwise get. 

It is important to recognise the importance of having research universities at the pinnacle of that system,

Why? Altbach won't tell us. 

but to understand that the number of such institutions is a small part of the total – and that choosing which universities will be research-intensive is quite important.

meaningless gibberish. One could say 'It is important to recognize the importance of having super-duper Universities but also to understand that the number of super-duper Universities will be small'. The fact is, if a Uni is super-duper it will have real smart peeps who will find funding for research which more than pays for itself. But the same is true of any bunch of super-duper peeps- be they part of a faculty or part of a Cult.  

The NEP suggests that about 100 universities be identified as research universities in the near future.

Coz Amrika has R1 Universities and so, if we have R1 Universities, we will become American and say 'Howdy' to each other instead of 'Get the fuck out of my way you fucking dehati retard'.  

These universities will focus strongly on research and doctoral programmes, in addition to having high quality education at bachelor and masters degree levels.

Also there will be plenty of unicorns with rainbows coming out of their assholes wandering the grounds.  

The rest of the more than 900 universities will be teaching universities, which will mainly deliver high quality education.

and the ability to give yourself a b.j.  

These universities are also expected to do a modest amount of research and have small doctoral programmes.

So, they will be R2 Universities. Why not just rename India the United States of Almost America?  

This differentiation is extremely important, since without carefully articulating this, all universities try to do both research and education without adequate resources or the quality of faculty that is needed for high quality research, meaning they will end up being mediocre at both.

This is hilarious. Altbach is saying 'it is important that shithole Universities say 'we are shithole Universities'. If shithole Universities don't keep saying this, they will inevitably end up trying to set up a Large Hadron Collider in the cowshed. This will piss off the cows.  

How the research universities will be differentiated from the rest must be done in a transparent manner

Hang a big placard from their necks which says 'I am a shit University. Don't come too close to me. My stupidity may be contagious'.  

using a sound classification framework (like the Carnegie Classification in the United States) that uses a few important measures of research, such as the size of doctoral programmes, the number of research faculty with doctorates, the level of research funding, publications and citations, among others. (The Carnegie framework was adapted for India in a paper published in Higher Education last year, which identified about 70 universities from the top 200 in the NIRF as research universities).

32 of them are engineering colleges. Foreigners may need this type of classification. Indians don't. We know which tiny portion of which University isn't wholly shite. The problem is, if you look a bit closer, most of that research is shite and what isn't shite is better pursued abroad- unless the thing isn't being done at a University at all.  

Some have argued that India needs to develop its own university model.

This happened long ago. Why pretend Indian universities are based on a foreign pattern? One or two may have started out that way. But they had to adapt to Indian conditions. On the other hand, Defense Research may well be done along similar lines to other countries. But we don't know much about this.  

While a research university, or any academic institution, must take into account national realities, the basic model of the research university is well established and necessarily reflects the patterns followed by the best universities globally.

The best universities are ones that can keep out the stupid and the woke. Indian Universities can't do that for political and legal reasons.  

China, which has been quite successful in developing a number of successful research universities by, among other things, spending vast sums of money on the effort, talked about “universities with Chinese characteristics”.

China took the opposite course from India back in the early days of the Republic. Instead of degree mills, they aggressively pursued excellence. Unlike the Latin American 'Cordoba model' they didn't give a fuck about 'inclusivity'. Elitism pays off- though, like Japan back in the Sixties, an overly selective Secondary School system means a lot of undergrads slack off and are allowed to get away with it. I believe that trend has already reversed itself in China- so they will continue to rise.

 Unlike China, India had produced one or two first class mathematicians and physicists prior to 1920. After that, politics took over. Bose of 'boson' fame did nothing but agitate for this or that. Harvard educated Kosambi turned into a loony-Leftist crank publishing ludicrous proofs of the Reimann hypothesis. The Chinese entrenched themselves in American Universities at an earlier date to the Indians. This meant that after Chinese growth took off, they could target a large diaspora with cutting edge skills and get them to 'return to the motherland' on attractive salary packages and generous research funding. It remains to be seen whether China will overtake the US or, where it has already done so, maintain its lead.  

In fact their successful universities follow established, mainly Western, models.

Also, Chinese people wear trousers and shirts on the Western model.  

Indeed, the main elements that are ‘Chinese’ are negative – limitations on academic freedom, restrictions on access to some information and too much bureaucracy – and actually slow down progress.

Suppressing the fuck out of students turned out to be a good idea for China. 

Thus, successful Indian research universities will inevitably resemble the best universities worldwide.

In every sense, except that of existing in reality. Even if a research Uni in India is as good as one in America, the best and brightest will want to go to America. Why? It is a pathway to a Green Card. Fuck Excellence. We want greenbacks.  

Pathways to excellence

India has traditionally taken the path of creating small and specialised institutions in areas like engineering, medicine, law, social sciences, business and others – the best known of which are the Indian Institutes of Technology.

Globally, however, most research universities tend to be multidisciplinary. The reason for this is that, in the modern world, where the main challenges are multidisciplinary, high quality innovation and research require institutions to have multiple disciplines in the same university.

Coz physicists really need to rap with sociologists. Chemists like talking to experts in Gender Studies. 

The High Table at some elite Oxbridge College may have created 'synergy' in the past. Nowadays, the internet brings people together even more easily. Universities are ceasing to matter. Indeed, COVID may bring about fundamental changes in the way they operate.

The NEP, in keeping with this globally successful approach, expects all research universities to scale up and become multidisciplinary, each having up to 25,000 students.

The NEP is as stupid as shit. This is a recipe for bogus research and 'citation cartels' and bogus research journals and lots of people researching ' Dalit contributions to Quantum Physics' and 'Cow Urine as superconductor' etc, etc.  

If the existing top Indian institutions and universities can expand in size and add more disciplines, this will provide them with the scale and disciplinary diversity needed to be included in the world’s top research universities.

Till people spot the obvious fraud and the index is reconstituted to do its job- viz. flatter those who pay for it.  

It may also be possible to merge some existing institutions, as has been successfully done in France recently.

Merge Jamia Malia with JNU and you'll still have a shit-show. 

India has several important advantages as it emerges as an academic power.

But it had them in a comparatively greater degree even as it declined as an academic power. In 1950, India was better at Stats than most American Unis- as Hannan records. But Americans didn't want to come to India to study whereas an Indian blessed his stars if he could get to the States.  

The widespread use of English means that India is immediately part of global scientific communication.

This is increasingly irrelevant thanks to much improved machine translation. 

India also has a sizable cadre of accomplished academics and researchers – both within the country and as part of the diaspora. Creating a productive academic environment for the most talented academics requires careful attention, good organisation and adequate funding.

Conversely, letting those researchers obey the invisible hand of the market may be even more beneficial if the Knowledge they produce is 'non-rival' and 'non-excludable'. It is mere vanity to worry about League Tables if the great mass of your country is very very poor. On the other hand, if research is 'excludable', and if it can generate rapid economic growth, then it can be well-rewarded indigenously- provided political interference is ruled out and only profit is pursued.  

Involving the diaspora is quite important as the talent pool is immense – a significant number of Indians currently serve as university presidents and provosts of, for example, American universities, and could contribute knowledge about building research universities, even if they do not actually return to India.

If they speak with one voice- perhaps. But the very fact that they left India would call their motivation into question. Why should India subsidize a brain drain from which America would ultimately benefit? 

Similarly, Indian professors in the diaspora can contribute to building research capacity by participating in collaborative research and other initiatives.

Some do so already. Those who don't won't just because we say 'pretty please'.  

The research universities need substantially expanded resources for research.

Whereas Indian citizens need food and shelter and medicines.  

Current levels of funding for research in universities is dramatically insufficient – India has consistently underfunded all aspects of higher education in the past.

Because it is as poor as shit and because education hasn't really raised productivity very much.  

The NEP has correctly identified this as an area to be developed and has proposed establishing a National Research Foundation which will have significant funds for supporting research in four areas – technology, science, social science and arts and humanities.

Social Science? Arts? More wokeness of a soporific type!  

The NEP also suggests that the different ministries should set aside funds for research, increase investment in research and enhance linkages of universities with the economy and society.

Ministries will fund research which establishes reasons, however bogus, as to why the Ministry should get more money.  

Overall, if these measures are implemented well, it will enhance the level of research in universities while making them more relevant for society and more globally competitive.

Rubbish! The thing will be a shit-show.  

Research universities also need full autonomy – they are too complex to be governed in any other manner.

But they don't want autonomy. Why? Because then the Vee Cee will constantly be being attacked by agitated students and taken to court and so forth. Only if the guy is an out and out gangster would he want autonomy. A better solution is to let every Hindu sect open a 'minority' Institution.  

That is why even the publicly funded institutions in most developed countries enjoy almost full autonomy, with little or no direct involvement by the government in the management or governance of these institutions.

But the moment 'woke' nutters start running amok demanding statues be decapitated and Israel be boycotted and so forth, the Government has to intervene. Anyway, 'autonomy' can mean the Vee Cee gives herself a massive pay-rise and then a few years down the road, the University goes bankrupt. Freedom means being free to fail.  

The NEP has recommended making research universities fully autonomous, with self-perpetuating boards having a very limited representation of government people or government appointees, with the board selecting and appointing the chief executive.

Cool! The Ruling Party will be able to entrench itself for all time in the case of public sector projects whereas, private universities will become a tax shelter for Corporates. 

This would be a dramatic change from current Indian practice where the government appoints top leaders and controls the purse strings.

The dramatic change is that the guys the Government appoints get to appoint their successors even if the Government changes. What will be the result? The lunatic or gerontocratic fringe of the ruling party gets entrenched on a Campus which will then keep alive the shibboleths of a long dead ideology in a more and more ludicrous form. 

These changes in the board structure and appointment of the chief executive, in addition to increased funding, could usher in a new dynamism in public research universities in India. The NEP also recommends full financial autonomy for universities.

Does any Vee Cee really want to be in the position of raising hostel fees and cutting back on shite Departments? Sure- if they get paid mega-bucks. Otherwise, as is happening at JNU, the research budget is cut to the bone so that the Vee Cee has plenty of security guards to keep the students away from him.  

The stars are aligned for India to play an important part in the global knowledge system

Coz Indians are into astrology, right? 

and to build world-class research universities.

Abroad. Don't do it in India. If you have to set up in India, then be like the Indian School of Business- don't register as a University.

The talent exists, the need is clear and there are some promising initiatives from the government.

But Governments will always prefer to grant bigger and bigger quotas at such places.  

The challenge is no longer a lack of ideas

The challenge is that all the ideas these guys come up with are utter shit. We need more Medical Colleges & Research Institutes. Will we get it? No. Instead vested interest groups will talk up Research Universities though you don't have to conduct any very complicated survey to discover they are worthless.  

– it is sustained support and effective implementation. But in the Indian context, these are indeed significant hurdles.

Indeed. Indian politicians have long preferred to divide up an imaginary cake rather than actually bake it. In the public sector, there will constantly be new rules on reservations and then appeals to the Supreme Court during which hiring will be frozen. Furthermore, funds for Research are the first to go when more money has to be spent on security. The private sector faces a different 'boom-bust' cycle. At times, genuine laboratories are expanded. But then cheaper 'Social Science' research is substituted for the genuine article and students realize they are stuck with obsolete equipment. 

Suppose India had an excellent bureaucracy and a really smart judiciary- then it might have excellent public sector institutions. Equally, if it had an excellent private sector and really smart investors- then it would have excellent private sector institutions. Lacking both, it will have shitty institutions though no doubt for purely demographic reasons some tiny islands of merit might be visible. 

Consider India's Cinema industry. There is plenty of competition so the thing is pretty good. But it isn't world class. By contrast, the South Koreans make movies which are remade by the Americans and the Indians and so forth. Who in their right mind would remake an Indian movie for a foreign market? 

Let Indian Universities be like Indian Movies or Indian Music. Let competition flourish so that standards go up. But don't expect the thing to be globally competitive. After all, Indian preferences aren't the same as those of richer countries. Some Indian Research Institutes are a better choice for really smart Indians than any foreign University. What's more, there are a lot of things which can be done immediately to create synergy by collaborations which, at a later point, can become the type of interdisciplinary field which generates cutting edge results.