Amartya Sen, Meghnad Desai differ on growth strategy

A "heartless" pursuit of economic reforms for a period of time, which could raise growth to 8-10 per cent for ten years, would ease the economic pressure on politics, said Meghnad Desai, member of the House of Lords in England.

In the backdrop of diverse regional identities pulling the government in different directions, Desai said:"politics is about distribution rather than about growth".

Desai was in a dialogue with Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen on issues of Development and Nationhood at the conclusion of the two-day seminar organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce (Ficci) and Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources (SRC).

Desai's main contention, that India was a multi-party state with many people defining their primordial loyalty as to their language, region or caste by the late 1970s, was strongly contested by Sen""in a relatively benign mood -- who meandered into history to prove that the concept of India, which was first written about by Megasthenes, had been around for long before Nehru attempted to redefine it.

Desai, however, rebutted, saying that though the concept of India might have been around, the historical idea of India was along different geographical areas and that nobody had ruled over entire 'India'.

He also said: "The India that Nehru led was not the same one he had discovered. Nehru had to re-jig that dialogue because Partition was a very deep fissure."

Desai said that the stagnation in economic growth in the first 30 years after independence had created regional and caste based groups.

"If a single majority party were in power, a number of such expenditures would not take place and we would have a growth-enhancing and poverty-reducing expenditure." Desai said, adding that "if economic reforms were pursued heartlessly, growth could be enhanced".

If the economy could grow by 8-10 years, it would create jobs in the private sector and would push the economic pressure off politics and the public sector would not be seen as something people had to live off.

The diversion of resources to appease smaller parties in India was becoming an internal drain, drawing away 10-15 per cent of the gross domestic product.

A "grand coalition" of the BJP and the Congress would result in savings of resources, which would otherwise be spent on maintaining coalitions, Desai concluded.

Sen was, however, of the view that the growth rate would depend on the nature of growth and had more to do with the nature of economic policy and priorities adopted by the government. He said that the reassertion of regional parties was not to be bemoaned but seen as reason for celebration.