Sen lauds emphasis on social infrastructure

'UPA government is correcting imbalances in the economy'

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) today found an ally in the Nobel prize- winning economist Amartya Sen who lauded the government's emphasis on development of social infrastructure.

Sen's lecture on 'India: Big or Small' here touched upon both economic and political issues. Appreciating the UPA government's focus on social sectors, he took an adverse view of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) Hindutva philosophy, which he said was responsible for the party's electoral setback.

The Indian economy, he said, had suffered from chronic government underactivity in areas like basic education and elementary healthcare and overactivity in areas like the licence raj.

The latter problem was taken care of through the Manmohan Singh led liberalisation during the 1990s but the former was left unattended to, he added.

"There has been considerable evidence that the present Indian government is much more committed to correcting this imbalance. The under-investment in the social sector is much more recognised now," said Sen, whose work has stressed the importance of social sector development as part of economic reforms.

Appreciating the Employment Guarantee Bill, which aims at providing guaranteed employment for 100 days a year to the rural poor, he cautioned that care should be taken to ensure the programme did not divert resources from other social sectors like health and education.

"If economic capabilities have to be effectively advanced through employment guarantee, the focus should also be on the nature of the work done," he said.

Sen said that while India had a lot to learn from China "" achieving high growth rates, entering into all possible markets "" it should also avoid the mistakes China had made. Among the major wrong steps he identified were the privatisation of healthcare services and the increasing inequality.

During the post-reforms period, China's growth was driven by industrial expansion, accompanied by rising inequality in the country. "India should hence take care that in the process of achieving higher growth rates, the rural areas are not neglected," he said.

Sen also spoke about the issue of minority rights and secularism. Condemning the Gujarat riots, he said that the BJP allies had failed to resist the Hindutva movement's undermining of India's secular fabric.

Lamenting the lack of public discussion on various crucial issues like endemic or area-specific hunger, he said that the Right to Information Bill would go a long way towards building up public opinion and generating visibility on issues that he said were generally relegated to the background.