You are here: Home>Collections>Wealth

Reform must benefit underprivileged: Amartya

TNN Jan 28, 2004, 07.29am IST

NEW DELHI: Circa 800 BC, Maitreyi asked her husband Yagnyavalkya whether wealth would make her immortal and Yagnyavalkya replied in the negative. What use is such wealth, she said in dismissal. This bit of wisdom from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad served as a modern day parable for reform when Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen addressed the inaugural session of the global development conference of the Global Development Network here today.

Taking immortality to be an extreme case of longevity and substituting reform for wealth, prof Sen cautioned policymakers that reform must be person-related and driven by ethical goals. While markets, GDP growth and technological change are what reform mostly focuses on, it is important to ensure that reform advances the cause of life and freedom, particularly of the deprived.

Taking life expectancy at birth and the infant mortality rate as two basic measures of the quality of life, prof Sen brought out some features of the Chinese reform experience that are not as bright as the rapid material progress that has caught everyone's attention around the world.

Since reforms began in China in 1979, there has been a plateauing off of life expectancy and infant mortality in that country, reflecting poor concern of public policy for the common man. India's post reform experience so far has not been similarly adverse, with favourable changes still taking place in these two indices.

RBI governor Y V Reddy, who inaugurated the conference, standing in for finance minister Jaswant Singh who had to be away to attend an impromptu Cabinet meeting, explained how Indian reform is driven by internal constituencies, even while policymakers are sensitive to international opinion.

The conference brings together about 500 researchers from the developing countries to pool their findings and enrich the content of economic reform in the developing world.