For those who don't have the distinct pleasure of being my Facebook friend, you may not have noticed how I recently trumpeted my meeting with my intellectual hero, Amartya Sen. Some of you who do have the distinct pleasure (and have not been rude enough to suggest I merely posed with him!), have asked me what we spoke about. Well, wait no further.
So, Prof. Sen had come to Chicago to talk about his recent book, the Idea of Justice, which in itself is quite abstract but has interesting implications for international politics. One of its central ideas is that given the capacity to prevent manifest injustice, we shouldn't get deadlocked in arguments about what the most just institution to address injustice is. When I heard this argument, one of my first thoughts was humanitarian interventions and I asked him what should countries which have little capacity to act internationally, do? For some reason, he assumed I had India in mind when I asked the question and immediately replied that India should do more in Burma and Sudan (to promote democratization and prevent genocide respectively).
I was quite surprised because a) I hadn't heard that from him publicly, and b) despite that economics training, he had little patience for cost-benefit accounting in these two scenarios. While there is plenty to disagree about in this particular application of his idea, I think in general, it has a lot of merit in arguments about economics, law and social justice.
In any case, the meeting was definitely the highlight of my year and one I will treasure for a long time to come.
5 comments:
In 50 years, Ashesh Prasann will be as wise and good-looking as the man on the right side of this picture: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_IZQxkOo6HQo/S-ToyqCbN5I/AAAAAAAAAI8/DFFV3GztTAM/s1600/Amartya.jpg
Haha, in the meantime I have to make do with my unwise and not so smashing looks!
(You said it first ... :P )
Yes, Sonny, that's a very smart answer that you got.Somehow, as a country, we lack the confidence to speak publicly on matters that deserve taking a clear stand on.We seem to be indulging to much on political correctness and too little on our ideas of justice or our reputation as argumentative Indians.
True, Sanjhle Pa. But I suspect its partly an overcompensation for the perception that India ran a moralistic (and not strategic enough) foreign policy under Nehru. I'm not sure what measures Sen precisely in mind, but there definitely could be ways of exercising pressure where manifest injustice exists.
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