Cambridge Economics & the Disputation in India’s Economic Policy (2013)

May 19, 2013 — drsubrotoroy

See also

2021: https://independentindian.com/2021/07/26/critique-of-amartya-or-rather-critique-of-team-amartya-sens-production-of-home-in-the-world-etc/
1986-1992 

Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s edited by Subroto Roy & William E James, 1986-1992… pdf copy uploaded 2021

Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, edited by William E James & Subroto Roy, 1986-1993… pdf copy uploaded 2021

2006: https://independentindian.com/2006/05/21/the-politics-of-dr-singh/

2008: https://independentindian.com/2008/04/25/assessing-manmohan-the-doctor-of-deficit-finance-should-realise-the-currency-is-at-stake/

23 August 2013 : 

https://independentindian.com/2013/08/23/did-jagdish-bhagwati-originate-pioneer-intellectually-father-indias-1991-economic-reform-did-manmohan-singh-or-did-i-through-my-encounter-with-rajiv-gandhi-just-as-siddhartha-shan/

19 May 2013

“Manmohan and Sonia have violated Rajiv Gandhi’s intended reforms; the Communists have been appeased or bought; the BJP is incompetent”

is what I said in Sep 2007 in an op-ed in The Statesman. I have to say it again, adding Amartya Sen too for his backing of the so-called “Food Security Bill”…

[Sonia was livid in a speech after I said in 2007 “Manmohan and Sonia have violated Rajiv Gandhi’s intended reforms” … Her stooges wanted me arrested! One said “lined up and shot”… Then she said she only meant to refer to Haryana politics! … https://twitter.com/subyroy/status/1064737873746976768?s=20  ]

But taking Sonia and Rajiv out of it all, we are left with a battle from within Cambridge economics, viz,

Sen and Singh (disciples of Joan Robinson, Kaldor, Dobb et al in the 1950s)

vs

myself … in my PhD thesis of 1981 under Frank Hahn...

PhD

 15 July 2013

I am afraid I cannot remember a cogent coherent book authored by Amartya Sen since his 1972 *On Economic Inequality*, which had nice surveys of the Gini coefficient and related concepts…

My 2006 conversation with him about his book *Identity and Violence* is here.  (see too “Is “Cambridge Philosophy” dead, in Cambridge? Can it be resurrected, there? Case Study: Renford Bambrough (& Subroto Roy) preceded by decades Cheryl Misak’s thesis on Wittgenstein being linked with Peirce via Ramsey…”) 

I now see he and a co-author seem to have produced yet one more piece of extended undergraduate waffle…E.g. “If development is about the expansion of freedom, it has to embrace the removal of poverty as well as paying attention to ecology as integral parts of a unified concern, aimed ultimately at the security and advancement of human freedom. Indeed, important components of human freedoms — and crucial ingredients of our quality of life — are thoroughly dependent on the integrity of the environment, involving the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the epidemiological surroundings in which we live….”

15 July 2013

Where is Amartya’s reply to this?

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And where is Manmohan’s reply to this?

ppp19842

And where is Manmohan’s reply to this?

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And Manmohan was given a copy of this

indvol

by me at a luncheon at the Indian Embassy Residence in Washington in September 1993 when the Ambassador, the late Barrister SS Ray, told him in the presence of all his senior aides including Montek Ahluwalia and C. Rangarajan, that I had authored the 1991 reform for the then-dead Rajiv Gandhi… on my laptop…

So, to cut to the chase, I have not and do not accept that either Amartya Sen or Manmohan Singh have been leaders of economic thought about India at least (US and British economists can judge for themselves the impact of the former on their own economics). The Sonia Congress has misled itself on the basis of their advocacy and the pity is the BJP, Communists et al in India seem to be even worse…

See also

https://independentindian.com/2013/08/23/did-jagdish-bhagwati-originate-pioneer-intellectually-father-indias-1991-economic-reform-did-manmohan-singh-or-did-i-through-my-encounter-with-rajiv-gandhi-just-as-siddhartha-shan/

Posted in Academic economics, Academic freedom, Academic research, Amartya Sen, Britain in India, British Universities, Cambridge Univ Economics, Cambridge University, Economic Policy, Economic Theory, Economic Theory of Growth, Government of India, India's 1991 Economic Reform, India's Economic History, India's Macroeconomics, India's Monetary & Fiscal Policy, Joan Robinson, Manmohan Singh, Nicholas Kaldor, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Subroto Roy. 1 Comment »