A champion of the freedom to do and be

Table talk with Amartya Sen
Cheong Suk-Wai, Straits Times 25 Feb 09;

CURIOSITY, which is often the mark of genius, had Professor Amartya Sen in its grip the morning I met him at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies last week.

What intrigued Prof Sen, 75, were some Nonya kueh laid out for his elevenses. He prodded a sweetcorn-and-coconut slice tentatively before plumping for a banana-and-gula melaka muffin.

'This is utterly delightful,' he said, brushing away crumbs that had fallen on his jacket.

Born to a chemistry professor and housewife in Santiniketan, Bengal, Prof Sen got his grounding in the classics at a school in Santiniketan founded by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

There, at the age of nine, he encountered an apparent lunatic who was wandering about the school grounds. Recalling that life-changing moment, Prof Sen told the Guardian newspaper: 'I got chatting to the man and it became quite clear he hadn't eaten for about 40 days.'

Compassion has informed Prof Sen's lifework. He has sought to find solutions to the problems of deprivation and inequality because he believes that what is most important in life is for people 'to be able to do and be', as his friend, Oxford University economist Sudhir Anand once put it.

Prof Sen himself is an example of strenuous being and doing. At 18, he duelled with cancer of the mouth, which led to painful reconstructive surgery at 22. Despite which, he went on to distinguish himself in welfare economics, working extensively in India and China, with sojourns at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and many Ivy League institutions, then Cambridge University and now Harvard University.

In 1998, he was awarded the Nobel prize for economics. That same year, he became the first Asian to head an Oxbridge college - and none other than Trinity, Isaac Newton's college. The latter achievement stumped some British immigration officers, who wondered how he could be 'a friend' of the Master of Trinity College since he claimed to be residing at the Master's address. Such are the prejudices Prof Sen has parried with throughout his career.

The thrice-married father of four teaches economics and philosophy at Harvard, but is on sabbatical this semester to write a book, The Idea Of Justice, which is scheduled for release in July.

Economic crisis

MUCH of the United States Treasury's efforts to kick-start America's stalling economy have so far centred on pumping liquidity back into its battered banks, but Prof Sen believes that is akin to putting the cart before the horse.

With a doff to British economist Arthur Cecil Pigou, Prof Sen said: 'Once an economy is in the grip of pessimism, you cannot change it just by changing the objective circumstances because the lack of confidence in people makes the economy almost unrescuable.

'You have to address the confidence thing, and that requires a different type of agenda than we have.'

That 'psychology of pessimism', as he put it, was borne out by Wall Street plunging the very day US President Barack Obama endorsed a US$75 billion (S$114 billion) mortgage relief plan.

Prof Sen was also not too sure that the US government's US$700 billion bailout of the US financial market late last year will unclog it enough for credit to flow freely again.

'I mean, this whole idea that just giving money to an organisation will get the organisation to do what you expect it to do is not right, because they will do it only if it is in their interest to do it.'

The alternatives, he said, are either to nationalise US banks or make it a condition that those which receive government funds have to then lend the money to the man in the street. Though he is not against state intervention, he wondered whether either step might not further undermine confidence in a market already parched of trust.

He blamed the crisis squarely on the lack of regulation in US financial markets. 'Adam Smith described it in a lovely phrase, saying there are always 'prodigals and projectors',' he said, prodigals being those who go out on their own and projectors being those who promote various schemes and make a lot of money.

They have both messed up the US economy, Prof Sen added, because no one checked their actions. The US had gradually abolished regulatory regimes over the past 30 years as its economy moved towards a very 'monolithic, market- and profit motive-based system'.

Much of his work in recent years has been on freedom as a catalyst for development, rather than freewheeling capitalism. So, I asked him, if freedom is essential for development, how would he explain Singapore's meteoric rise from Third to First World despite its curtailment of some freedoms.

His answer: 'Freedom is a complex subject. I am critical of the absence of democracy in many countries and, while Singapore is not an autocratic country, the absence of some elements of democracy and press freedom is something I am critical of.'

But then Singapore is a showcase of freedom's other facets, he pointed out, such as its tolerant multiracial and multi-cultural society. 'You can breathe easily in Singapore in a way that you cannot in many countries in the world with far less mixture than Singapore.'

Slightly later, he said: 'When race riots or community-based violence were taking place in France, Germany and The Netherlands, I think there were very few people in the world who did not stop and say that Singapore knows something that Europe has not yet learnt. And that's a big lesson to bear in mind.'

And while many might still call the Republic a tiny red dot with very limited resources, Prof Sen's years of working with the world's most destitute give him a different take on Singapore's future.

'You say very limited resources,' he mused. 'But, of course, Singapore's main resource is human beings - their skills, their cultivation of a respect for knowledge. These are tremendous resources. They're not so easy to have.'

Affable and engaging, he added that the best thing Singapore can do to bolster its future is to ask: 'What can we do here which would be better for Singapore?'

Indeed, he was certain that Singaporeans could play 'a very important part' in global public reasoning, by which he meant fostering open dialogue 'to lead the world to a more safe and just place'.

Public reasoning is, in fact, at the core of the book he is writing now. Titled The Idea Of Justice, it examines how to get everyone to behave reasonably and make a difference to others 'without bringing in the obligation of power'.

He does so by rejecting the centuries- old social contract theory, which he finds limiting because it frames one's obligations as being conditional upon others fulfilling theirs. But, he demanded, how does one explain the many other crucial moral duties, such as that of a mother towards her children? 'There are duties you have to do no matter what is being done to you. But whenever you have the power to make a difference, you have an obligation to think what you ought to do.'

His other quarrel with the social contract theory is that it aims for a perfect state which, again, he found unrealistic. 'You have to judge things in a different way. (You have to ask:) 'Is it more just than that?' Whereas the contract approach is to say: 'Is it perfectly just?''

Prof Sen wants to urge everyone everywhere to abandon the idea of perfect states, and focus instead on enhancing justice. And he said the current economic crisis 'is a marvellous opportunity to re-examine policies'.