In a democracy, if you are critical of the government, you have to express it. Sitting quietly and grumbling about it is not going to help. That’s not what democracy is for.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen

Said : Nobel laureate Amartya Sen in an interview with Amrita Dutta published in The Indian Express of today.

Highlights of the interview are as under :

There is a strong gender preference, which is characteristic of India, much more so than we often recognise. If you compare India with Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, not to mention China, we come out worse in female life expectancy, female literacy, female schooling, female survival. The previous government did not do enough, but the present government is doing less than enough. 

"The positive thing about Modi, which I recognized even earlier, was that he was telling people: we can get things done. I admired it then, I admired it now. The problem begins with what it is that he wants to get done. I think he has a wrong understanding of economic development." 

1. You can think of development as a process with human beings at the centre, or you can see it as a process with financial and industrial leadership [at the centre]. He (Modi) definitely belongs to the latter [school of thought]. We pay no attention to that, as if the quality of human beings is not central to human development. If India was bad at that earlier, it’s worse at it now. 
2. On his decision to quit Nalanda University : 'The board wanted unanimously me to continue as chancellor, but the government’s advice was clear: under no circumstances. The Minister of External Affairs spoke clearly to the members of the board and said that Amartya Sen wasn’t acceptable. Some people wanted to continue the battle but I thought that would be a mistake." 
3. It was clear to me that even if my friends in the board were to win in keeping me as chancellor, I could not be an effective leader because I would have to fight the government all the time. But I decided to make it a public affair so that it would be difficult to put a Hindutva ideologue in charge at Nalanda. The government did not want it to be made public at all. They would have loved it if I had quietly slunk away, but that, I am afraid, I was not willing to do. If there’s one thing to learn from this, it is that in a democracy, if you are critical of the government, you have to express it. Sitting quietly and grumbling about it is not going to help. That’s not what democracy is for. 
4. What made me speak up at the time of the elections was my concern at the Hindutva elements in Modi’s agenda. You see that as an academic very much now, in the interference in the academic administration of the National Book Trust or at the Indian Council of Cultural Relations or the Indian Council of Historical Research. What happened at Nalanda is a relatively nicer story than either it first appeared and also compared with what is happening to other educational/cultural institutions like ICCR or NBT or ICHR or for that matter TIFR, as well as what might be happening to the IIMs if the bill goes through.