Prime Minister of India - Dr. Manmohan Singh

PM's address at the International Conference on Development, Freedom and Welfare

"When I look at the glittering audience with such powerful intellects seated in this Hall, I am wondering what am I doing here. But it's a rare occasion for me to be present here to release a book which celebrates the life and work of my good friend Amartya Sen. I am therefore delighted to join this glittering gathering to celebrate the enormous intellectual achievements of my good friend and one time fellow student Professor Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate, Bharat Ratna. As Amartya mentioned, we have known each other since the days when we both were students at Cambridge. I certainly have always felt that Amartya even in those days gave one the impression that here is an individual who is going to make a lot of difference to the way people think about their problems and he has lived up to that expectation. Our paths diverged thereafter but I have watched with great admiration as he went on to climb the dizzying heights of economic theory, followed by forays into esoteric fields of moral philosophy, ethics and logics and with occasional illuminating excursions into history. More recently, he has also descended into the humdrum plains of development policy to study issues which are the focus of attention of the development community in general and are certainly the subject of daily debate in India and indeed in most parts of the developing world and that is as it should be. When I was a student at Cambridge, A.C. Pigou's 'Economics of Welfare' was the book which made a great deal of impact on me and there is a quote from Pigou's opening chapter about what economics is about which if I remember correctly reads something like this - "when we study economics, our impulse is not the philosopher's impulse, knowledge for the sake of knowledge but for the healing that knowledge may help to bring." And then going on to quote Carlyle, Pigou says, "Wonder says Carlyle is the beginning of philosophy. It is not wonder, Pigou adds but the social enthusiasm which revolts against the joylessness of withered life and disorderedness of mainstreams that is the main inspiration of economic science. Distinguished friend has been one of the greatest economist, one of the greatest philosophers and his life and work bear testimony to what Pigou said economy should be about.

It is a matter of great pride for all of us in India that Amartya's career as a teacher began in India, first at the Jadhavpur University, much of it later at the Delhi School of Economics where he and I were colleagues together and where he first began to explore Welfare economics and Social choice theory. Since then he has held academic positions in some of the most distinguished Universities in the world. Though quintessentially a global citizen, Amartya remains both at heart, and in citizenship, an Indian. He has told me that he is still carrying an Indian passport despite all the difficulties that are associated with being an Indian when you travel abroad. It is therefore especially appropriate that this international conference in his honour is being held in India and I thank Kaushik Basu and Professor Kanbur for having given concrete shape to this idea.

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all Amartya's friends and admirers who have come from different parts of the world to be here today.

Henry Kissinger is reported to have once observed that academic squabbles are as vicious as they are because the stakes are so low! This is not really true. Which ideas win out in the end is not a low stake activity. It has a huge impact on how we live our lives. Ideas matter enormously. As John Maynard Keynes in the General Theory in the last chapter said so eloquently and I quote :

"....the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood... Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas."

The theme of this conference is development, freedom and welfare. As our Republic enters its 60th year I must emphasise the historical importance of the Indian experience in this area. India consists of over a billion people, seeking their social upliftment, their political empowerment and their economic betterment within the framework of a liberal, a plural and a secular democracy. This is a truly remarkable endeavour by any measure.

The global community, I sincerely believe, has a great stake in the success of Indian experiment. I venture to suggest that this experiment deserves more credit than it usually secures, especially from our fellow economists! We are all mesmerized by numbers and graphs. These are relevant to any evaluation of the human experience. But they do not capture the essence of human existence. We do not live to eat, we eat to live.

Development and welfare are not the end-all and be-all of human endeavour. Freedom is. And freedom has many manifestations. Economic, social, political, intellectual, religious and so on. Pursuing development and seeking welfare within the framework of a liberal democracy are not an easy journey for a poor country like ours. Many nations started this journey with us and drifted away. Some chose not to walk this path, others were denied that opportunity.

India's achievement in this dimension has global relevance even today. In a world where intolerance is on the rise, in a world where bigotry is on the rise, in a world where narrow nationalisms challenge universal values, in a world where ideologies of exclusion challenge the inclusiveness of the human spirit, more voices must speak for freedom and democracy. Even if such freedoms are partial and such democracies are flawed.

I do not deny that our democracy has its faults. Amartya values its' argumentative aspect, others more impatient to see movement at times deplore it. Personally I feel what is important about our democracy is not so much the argumentativeness, but its ability to build consensus. Building consensus in a plural society is itself a great human and social achievement. I suggest to this August audience.

India's experiment in democracy has been captured by that famous motto, "unity in diversity". It is a motto that captures our civilisational inheritance. It is a motto that created our nation. It is a motto that will have to guide the world in this troubled 21st Century.

All human challenges today have become global challenges. The unfortunate fact is that while our problems have become global, our responses remain national or, at best, regional. One reason for this could be the inherent weakness of global institutions. Another could be the enduring strength of national interests. Consider the area of economic policy making, a subject that many of you here have been interested in for a lifetime. Why have global institutions failed? What can we do to repair them, to strengthen them, to make them more broad-based?

I am often amazed by the jealousy with which nations guard their control over international institutions even as they speak of the virtues of globalization and democracy! The time has come, I believe, for the global polity to catch up with the times and address the challenges posed by the evolving global economy.

Even as we urge the global community to recognize the global nature of the challenges we face, and urge them to work with us, we assure the world and our own people that we will not be found wanting as a nation in addressing the challenges at hand. Good governance, development and security are the least we can deliver to our people.

The debate on globalization has become too straight-jacketed and divided between those who seek only global solutions and those who seek national ones. It has become divided between those who remain obsessed with the ideologies of the market and those who adhere to the ideologies of Statism.

We in India have long rejected such stereotypes and such ideological straight-jacketing of policies. We have walked the pragmatic Middle Path, and will continue to do so. We must learn to walk on both legs.

The response of developed countries to the challenges of our times, be it the financial crisis or climate change or the menace of terrorism, shows that they have no monopoly of good ideas. We in the developing world wish to work with the developed, but we have to find our own ways to deal with these challenges. The imperatives of development, of the well-being of our people, and the logic of democratic politics dictates all this. We are, after all, answerable to our people.

I am glad that we are today celebrating the achievements of Amartya Sen, who has written persistently about openness, about freedom and the advancement of the poor wherever they reside, whatever their colour or religion. He has reminded us of the intellectual collaborations that we once had with China, of the scholars from distant lands who came to our own Nalanda University more than a thousand years ago and of the open courts of Ashoka and Akbar. And in that spirit let me say that we all are truly proud of Amartya Sen's achievements not just for India but for humanity at large. I wish Amartya a long and purposeful life and wish your conference all success. For Amartya I would say the Urdu couplet : 'Tum Zinda Raho Hazar baras, har baras ke din ho pachhas hazaar'."