Mostly I get up early in the morning and hit the road to go to work before school buses start rolling on road.  If you are stuck behind a school bus, on one lane each direction street, and it makes frequent stops to pick up the children, then it tests the limit of your patience, especially if you are getting late. Your eyes are focused on flashing stop sign sticking out of the side of bus. You are hoping and praying that soon the bus will make a turn on next street so you can move on.

 One morning last week, I got up late and by the time I hit the road to go to work, the school buses are already on the streets picking up children. Few streets before the local highway, where I usually make a turn, I encounter a school bus making a stop to pick up children. School bus stop sign is flashing red. I stop about 30 feet from the school bus. There are few cars behind me but no traffic from the opposite direction. My eyes are on flashing stop sign, and I am thinking—even if it delays people, but it is a good safety traffic law that all traffic should stop from both directions while the school bus picks up the children. While I am in this thought, suddenly a small school bus appears from the opposite direction and zooms by us without stopping.

I have ironic smile on my face and meanwhile school bus moves along. The bus is picking up small children for the elementary school. This time I am looking at the parents and children. Bus’s next stop is in front of a driveway, few feet before the next street. A mother with a child is standing near the curb and father is standing in the middle of the driveway, more near the house than the curb of road. Both are in sleeping gowns. The child is standing on left side of the mother and mother’s left hand is on the child’s left shoulder giving a gentle tug to embrace mom’s thighs. Father is looking more towards the house than the child or bus, and seems like was dragged out to prove his love. The child boards the bus, the mother is still standing and waving hands until the bus starts moving, but father has already waved, turned around and is near the house entrance door.    

On next stop, near a street corner a mother is standing holding child’s wrist with one hand and a lunch box in the other hand. The child boards the bus and mother tries to give the child the lunch box but he refuses to take it. Mother has a frustrating look on her face and child’s face and body is in slump posture in embarrassment. Perhaps child wants to eat school lunch and feels embarrassed to bring mommy’s lunch. The bus driver is waiting patiently with flashing stop sign for this stand off to resolve. Ultimately the mother gives up, waves with one hand and still holding the lunch box in the other hand. The bus moves on and I reach the entrance to local highway, I hesitate for few seconds to take the turn and want to follow the bus for few more stops, but make a turn on highway on my way to work.

f.sheikh

After Donald Trump’s election, some universities echoed with primal howls. Faculty members canceled classes for weeping, terrified students who asked: How could this possibly be happening?

I share apprehensions about President-elect Trump, but I also fear the reaction was evidence of how insular universities have become. When students inhabit liberal bubbles, they’re not learning much about their own country. To be fully educated, students should encounter not only Plato, but also Republicans.

We liberals are adept at pointing out the hypocrisies of Trump, but we should also address our own hypocrisy in terrain we govern, such as most universities: Too often, we embrace diversity of all kinds except for ideological. Repeated studies have found that about 10 percent of professors in the social sciences or the humanities are Republicans.

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On 6 November Amartya Sen visited LSE to discuss his new collection of cultural essays Country of First Boys with Nicholas Stern. Before taking the stage in the packed Old Theatre, he spoke to Sonali Campion and Taryana Odayar about the Indian government’s approach to development, Kerala as a model for universal education and healthcare in India, and his faith in democracy.

SC: You have said that looking at the end point of a debate is not an ideal way of understanding the wider discussion. This seems relevant in relation to economic policy today, where developing countries aspire to high and continuous growth. What’s your view on the current Indian government’s manner of pursuing growth?

AS: Let me make a clarification first. The point about the end point not being the only issue asks what were the counter arguments that were considered? What were the different points of view that may or may have not have been aired, even if the end point is correct? That only becomes relevant when you agree with the end point. In the case of the policy as it stands now, that is not the case. I think the end point is wrong. The argumentation process is wrong as well, but there are two distinct issues here.

India is the only country in the world which is trying to become a global economic power with an uneducated and unhealthy labour force. It’s never been done before, and never will be done in the future either. There is a reason why Europe went for universal education, and so did America. Japan, after the Meiji restoration in 1868, wanted to get full literate in 40 years and they did. So did South Korea after the war, and Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and China.

The whole idea that you could somehow separate out the process of economic growth from the quality of the labour force is a mistake against which Adam Smith warned in 1776. It’s an ancient danger, and he might have been right to think that the British government at the time did not pay sufficient interest in basic education for all. Unfortunately that applies today to government of India as well. It doesn’t acknowledge the relevance of the quality of human labour.

That is the foundation of their mistake, their conclusions therefore are wrong. For example, they are trying to go suddenly for everything to be done by cash, which is meant to be an experiment. In one of his first interviews after winning the Nobel Prize this year Angus Deaton said this is purely an experiment, but it’s an experiment with the lives of the poor. And I’m afraid I agree with him, and his scepticism towards it. There was a reason why someone as intensely keen on the market economy as Adam Smith thought the government has to make the country fully literate, this is something the government can do. America is meant to be very anti-government but every American has a right to primary school education paid for by the government, you’re picked up from your home by government buses, delivered to your state school and educated there.

India is trying to be different from America, Europe, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Singapore, China – all of them. This is not good way of thinking of economics. So foundationally, the government’s understanding of development underlying their approach is mistaken. Having said that, the previous government was terribly mistaken too. But one hoped there might be a change, and there has been, but not for the better. All the sins of the past government have been added up.

SC: Do you see the current challenges to secularism in India as a threat to the country’s economic progress?

AS: Recently Raghuram Rajan, governor of the Reserve Bank (of India) said that economic goals require a tolerant economic climate and I think he is basically right. I’ve done no independent research on that, my dislike of the lack of tolerance is because it is terrible for human beings and the society, but I respect Rajan enough to think he is also right.

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posted by f. sheikh