---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1998 20:59:59 -0800 (PST)
From: MichaelP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "unlikely.suspects": ;
Subject: Empower women for development: Amartya Sen
URL: http://www.timesofindia.com/today/27home2.htm
The Times of India
Sunday 27 December 1998
Empower women for development: Amartya
Ambar Basu
CALCUTTA: Wary of turning into a messiah with a formula for India's
troubled economy and polity, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Saturday
appealed for a less sectarian approach to complex problems that in his
view required multi-pronged strategies to provide the best to the
most.
An urgent need to bring forth an equitable distribution of social
opportunities and the fruits of economic development, along with
imbibing an "absorptive" capacity, came out loud and clear during
Prof Sen's interactive session with newspersons here.
Empowerment of women and providing health care, education, credit and
land reform facilities to the lowest rungs of the population were
among the many steps, Prof Sen said, that could be taken to prevent
concentration of the means of production in a few hands.
Social opportunities, education and health care for women would
certainly help to solve the population problem, he said. The problems
of population growth could be tackled if the strategies were
"embedded in the economic fabric, he added.
Pointing out the flaws in Malthus' theory, he said that if young women
were empowered and allowed a voice in decision-making, the problems of
population growth could be reduced.
Prof Sen said he "revelled" in an environment of multi-party
democracies as it gave him the freedom to think and articulate.
However, he said that the fragmentation of political space and the
emergence of parties representing particular groups of deprivation
should not deflect attention from the urgent need to tackle the
problems of deprivation and inequality.
On whether a multitude of foreign loans could prove harmful for a
growing economy, Prof Sen said: "We need not treat foreign loans as
poison." Explaining that such loans were sought everywhere, he said
problems arose when the loans failed to bring the desired change in
the economy, pushing a country into a debt trap.
Stating that plural politics was very important for a country like
India, the Nobel laureate said, "We must not lose clarity of the lack
of achievement in India today. At the same time, our success depends
on the extent to which political parties are able to focus on the
commonality of a problem rather than highlighting a speciality
group," Prof Sen said.
Political parties in a multi-party democracy had an immense
responsibility in not only staving off "desperate deprivation-led
situations like famines", but also generating literacy, public health
programmes and other "subtle, inequality-related" aspects, he
observed.
The 1998 Nobel Prize winner in economics also stressed the need to be
able to "absorb" merits of economic systems from across the world.
"There cannot be a model economy," he said. The success of a system
depended on its ability to imbibe the merits another system,
synthesising them with its own and moving ahead with greater steam,
Prof Sen said.
Even socialist economies have had their share of success, he said.
Erstwhile USSR boasted of a near zero illiteracy rate. Reforms brought
about in pre-reform China and Vietnam had helped these countries to
push ahead with their reform agenda, Prof Sen pointed out. "There is
a lot to learn from the merits of these systems," he said.
** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes. **
--
For MAI-not (un)subscription information, posting guidelines and
links to other MAI sites please see http://mai.flora.org/
