U-Turn: Amartya Sen example

Just by coincidence... they remind me somewhat of these five principles:

1. The importance of real freedoms in the assessment of a person's advantage
2. Individual differences in the ability to transform resources into valuable activities
3. The multi-variate nature of activities giving rise to happiness
4. A balance of materialistic and nonmaterialistic factors in evaluating human welfare
5. Concern for the distribution of opportunities within society

Guess what those five principles are? They're known collectively as the basis of what is called "Capabilities Approach". Amartya Sen is credited with having "developed" these ideas (all by his own sweet self!) in the 1980s. The "Capabilities Approach" as applied to other aspects of society is a recurrent theme in the writings of another vaunted professor of "Ethics", Martha Nussbaum.

Easy to see what happened here, no? First, Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum et al pile onto the deconstructionist bandwagon and use Western critical theory to relentlessly hammer dharmic civilization as obscurantist, elitist, caste-riven, inegalitarian, restrictive, etc. etc.

Of course, once the Western Grand Narrative representation of India has become the norm in cultural studies, our civilization's intellectual wealth is conveniently available for plunder, digestion, and re-packaging as "original thought" by the Amartya Sen/Martha Nussbaum types!

"Poverty" is still bandied about as a characteristically Indian vice... but a "capabilities approach", outlined on exactly the same dharmic principles of self-organizing social and economic development described by Surya below, has suddenly become the unique, original intellectual property of Sen and Nussbaum!! All hail the Age of Reason! 

These fellows are indeed the Clive and Mir Jaffar of today.

-KM

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This is very good analysis of Amartya Sen's and his girlfriend's (i.e. Nussbaum's) trajectory that fits the UTurn Theory. With one hand appropriate (i.e. stage 3 of uturn) and with the other hand denigrate the source (i.e. stage 4 of uturn). These stages as per uturn theory do not have to happen in one set sequence, nor do thay all happen in the same individual, and could take multiple generations of scholars to become evident. There is also stage 5 in which this "new and Western" thought is re-exported back to Indian intellectuals who eagerly lap it up. 

-RM

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Developing, and effectively marketing, a BD-based "App" for economic development is a particularly pressing need, because poverty (like the "plight of women") is one of those emotive touchstones used over and over again by postcolonial theorists employing Western categories to depict India as a "uniquely divided and oppressive place" (Ronald Inden, quoted in BD)

When the arch-pedagogues of the Western Grand Narrative, and their acolytes on the Indian Left, use "poverty" to bash India (and by extension, all that is Indian)... we have the deck stacked against us from the start. That is because "poverty" is emotionally loaded, and any discussion of the subject provides an excellent vehicle for gratuitous civilzational invective. 

Everybody knows "poverty" is bad, right? So when we get defensive about drain-inspector portrayals of poverty in India (such as "Slumdog Millionaire") it becomes easy for the enemy to portray us as vain jackasses... indeed, to assume a moral high ground and bash us with righteous indignation at our "inhumane indifference to the suffering of less privileged Indians". We are accused, in our embrace of "bourgeoisie nationalism", of willfully turning a blind eye to the harsh realities with which millions of our fellow countrymen contend every day.

Here is a case study in the use of "poverty". A potentially honest and non-judgmental journalistic treatise on an Indian slum has been immediately co-opted by the Usual Suspects to push their venal and motivated deconstruction of India.

http://www.amazon.com/Behind-Beautiful-Forevers-Mumbai-undercity/dp/1400067553

This is a book by one Katherine Boo who has apparently written about the effects of  poverty and deprivation around the world, including in the United States.

This book in particular deals with the Annawadi slum near Mumbai airport. Having not read the book myself, I cannot comment on whether it is simply a "drain-inspector's report" or actually offers a fresh perspective. It is quite possible, given Boo's reputation as a dispassionate and thorough journalist, that the book is simply a careful, non-judgmental and even sympathetic record of her interactions with Annawadi's inhabitants over a period of some years. She has not spared economic inequality in the West, and was awarded the Pullitzer Prize in 2000 for her reporting on the plight of welfare recipients and group-home inhabitants in Washington DC. 

Boo herself is a journalist, not a "theorist". She appears to have reported on her experiences in Annawadi (thankfully) without resorting to "analysis" or "interpretation".

However, her book has already become a vehicle for celebration, and hijack, by the theory-wallahs we know so well. They have seized upon it as another chance to do India down, and reinforce their pet themes.

Thus, if you scroll down the page and look at the excerpts from Editoral Reviews, you will see the consistent application of Western Universalist analysis by professional reviewers, even in their brief blurbs.

"A beautiful account, told through real-life stories, of the sorrows and joys, the anxieties and stamina, in the lives of the precarious and powerless in urban India whom a booming country has failed to absorb and integrate A brilliant book that simultaneously informs, agitates, angers, inspires, and instigates."... Amartya Sen

Not to be outdone: 

“Without question the best book yet written on contemporary India. Also, the best work of narrative nonfiction I’ve read in twenty-five years."... Ramachandra Guha

"Her book, situated in a slum on the edge of Mumbai’s international airport, is one of the most powerful indictments of economic inequality I’ve ever read. If Bollywood ever decides to do its own version of The Wire, this would be it.”... Barbara Ehrenreich

[Can you believe this Ehrenreich woman? In her view, Bollywood should take its cue from the mirror that American journalist Katherine Boo is holding up before India, and become inspired to incorporate the Western Grand narrative of Indian poverty into its own pop-cultural representations of itself! The arrogance, as always, is unbelievable.]

I don't know if any of these reviews are an accurate reflection of the book itself. What IS immediately apparent is that a number of "commentators" have jumped on the book to reinforce their own western universalist projections of rising India as THE poster boy for worldwide economic inequality. The presuppositions show through clearly in the gushing reviews: all poverty is the same and can be understood perfectly in terms of Western economic models; all slum societies can be characterized perfectly well by applying Western sociological categories; and by implication, the problem is only aggravated in a benighted heathen society such as India because of  such aberrations as "the caste system". In effect colonialism is let off the hook; the heavily reinforced imagery of "filthy slum next to glittering international airport" contributes to the image of India as a barbaric society that won't take care of it's poorest even when it has apparently "recovered" from colonial exploitation, and is on its way to global economic power.

The problem is that there isn't even a fight being put up here. The usurpation of the "poverty" theme by the malevolent deconstructionists of India is virtually uncontested. We are intimidated into dumbfounded embarrassment while the enemy maps the very real plight of our slum dwellers onto their own frameworks of understanding, rooted firmly in non-dharmic traditions of thought, with practically effortless insolence. 

One effect of this assault is to pre-emptively delegitimze alternative frameworks of conceiving of poverty, of approaching and resolving the social and economic problems associated with poverty. That is exactly what the Indian left wants: a monopoly over the characterization of Indian poverty, restricted to dogmatically Marxist frameworks that will never, ever concede an inch of space for dharmic solutions.

Just one of many reasons why I am so grateful that Rajiv has begun this work. 

-KM