This Article is From Dec 26, 2014

The NDTV Dialogues on Hopes and Challenges, 2015: Full Transcript

The NDTV Dialogues on Hopes and Challenges, 2015: Full Transcript
New Delhi: On 'The NDTV Dialogues', a look at the aspirations and challenges for India in the coming year 2015. On the panel are Nobel Laureate Prof Amartya Sen, BJP's NK Singh, AAP's Yogendra Yadav, Shekhar Gupta and Shaurya Doval, who heads the India foundation.

Here is the full transcript:

NDTV: Hello, and welcome to the NDTV Dialogues, a conversation of ideas. As we are on the cusp of a new year, on this episode we look at the aspirations and challenges for India in 2015 and I'm very happy to be joined by a distinguished panel for this debate. I am joined by Nobel Laureate Prof Amartya Sen, I am also joined by NK Singh of the BJP, Prof Yogendra Yadav of the Aam Aadmi Party, Shekhar Gupta and also joining me from Goa is Mr Shaurya Doval who is now heading the India Foundation, thank you all very much for being part of this Dialogue. Prof Amartya Sen, as we going into 2015 do you feel that your earlier words on the Prime Minister are being proved wrong? How, when you look at 2015, where do you see India and where do you see its governance?

Amartya Sen:  Well I think I don't know what earlier words about the Prime Minister you are talking about. When I was discussing the prospects of different parties, I made several statements; from some of them I was proved wrong, some of them I proved right basically,

NDTV: Or you won't be happy to see him as Prime Minister?  

Amartya Sen: That I did say because I did think that what I took be a more secular party should be in that position, but so are you asking me a question about the whether my view on secularism and India has changed?

NDTV: No, I think we will go on that in detail, but perhaps beginning on a note on looking ahead, as I said, to the challenges and aspirations, the governance issue.

Amartya Sen: I mean if you write a book, as I did, complaining about the continuity of hunger of the children, continuity of the fear of women in some parts of India, the absence of toilets in India and then if you see them being stated by the Prime Minister from the top of the Lal Quila, there is a reason to be happy. After all that is a kind of thing I have been discussing for a long time. Was I delighted by it? Yes absolutely yes. That doesn't change the secularism and these are very important issues in themselves.

NDTV: Mr NK Singh, would you come in on that aspect, looking ahead in 2015 looking at the challenges of governance

NK Singh: Well, I think that frankly speaking I am also, let me say that, glad that Amartya Sen's assessment in some parts of Mr Narendra Modi has proved to be wrong, in terms of the agenda which he has undertaken, of addressing issues which India definitely needs in order to improve its performance, on the index of human development, in terms of education, in terms of health, in terms of cleanliness, in terms of toilets, in terms of changing attitude which will be conducive to health. And these are very important issues about which Amartya Sen, himself, has written in great detail, that while growth is not the end objective of development and that the nature and quality of development matters enormously. So I think that the Prime Minister's agenda on some of these issues, designed in 2015 to make and try and usher in development agenda for India, which emphasizes growth as much as it emphasizes the quality of growth, in terms of what it does to very important it is on skills, in terms of education, in terms of health qualities, change in practices regarding cleanliness and toilets. And that when you add all these and aggregate all these it does definitely alter the strategy, which has been followed so far. Regrettably the strategy in the last five years have been one of the most disastrous strategies which India followed in terms of a government, which was paralyzed and all that it did was drive entitlement schemes, whose outcomes were exceedingly dubious.

NDTV: Well I'm glad you said the word 'entitlement'; because I want to bring Shekhar in, at the time of UPA, and I didn't know the reference since perhaps its been distinguished about how the UPA is run by 'povertarian', it had its thinking 'povertarian' and its 'povertarian' economics, and perhaps many have said that the biggest shift in this General Election on the new government has been the change of the thinking or the change of the mindset. Do you agree with, do you see that as the most fundamental change and do you think that's what going be carried forward or do you see that many have said, look what's actually changed?

Shekhar Gupta: No, I will try to simplify this sort of conflicting definition as much as possible, this is not to say that poor do not need attention. This is not to say that the poor do not need the hand of the state, but this is only to say what are the poor telling you now? Poor are telling you that you don't know what poverty means to me because you have never been there. So stop feeling sorry for me

NDTV: Prof Sen, of course who'd dispute that his work on the Bengal famine etc, but are Prof Amartya Sen's economics irrelevant? Are his politics irrelevant in today's India?

Shekhar Gupta: If I have an intellectual disagreement with Prof Sen I am honoured, right. What I'm saying is the poor of India is saying don't feel sorry for me because when you feel sorry for me, thinking that I am starving and then you throw free food at me, I have got food. Right? I was just telling him the Walk The Talk for this week is not the Walk The Talk with celebrities, it was just some completely unknown tribals in a tribal village in Jharkhand. And you will find it begins with two young women going to school, class 10 women and the first question to them is "aapki kya samsya hai?" "Whats your problem?" This is a really poor tribal village in Jharkhand; deep Jharkhand. What are the two girls saying? Shauchaalya nahin hai and they say it's embarrassing; it is unsafe to go in the dark every morning to the fields. We need toilets. They have got a cycle each, they are going to school, they are frankly quite well dressed, they are tribals in a poor village, they don't need free food may be because the free food, may be they have money to buy bicycles, but they want quality of life to get better. So poverty in India right now is that too many Indians are living sub optimally because state doesn't provide power, state doesn't provide water, state doesn't provide proper security, proper schooling; proper hospitals. Too many Indians lives sub optimally. If we had a functioning state the same people would live much better.

NDTV: Is that a change in aspiration, which Shekhar has talked about? Do you see that as well when you talk, when we talk about Delhi, which is what the AAP right now is focusing on in the next election, what is the biggest change you have seen and the biggest change post election? Your threat now really is Mr Modi. It's not really about competing ideologies. It's really about a personality.

Yogendra Yadav: Since we have a bigger canvas in this show Sonia, I will not only speak about Delhi and not about Mr Modi alone. Let's speak about India's aspiration. I have never understood one thing. The moment we talk of aspirations somehow we focus on the economy. The moment we talk of aspiration we start looking from the vantage point of the so called middle class, which is a euphemism in India, from the top 20 percent or so, and we focus too much on the instrumentalities. For realising aspirations let's keep our focus on aspirations and when we think of aspiration I think of political, democratic aspirations. People want governance to move closer to them. They want to be able to take control of their lives. There are economic aspirations, which includes freedom from hunger but is not yet, unfortunately, an issue which is behind us, it is a reality. There is aspiration for health. Unfortunately in this country the poor pay more for health then the rich do, something needs to be changed drastically. And there is educational aspiration.  Education now is such a deep aspiration cutting across all classes. So, we look at these aspirations and finally one thing that we don't talk about is cultural aspiration, dignified life and ability to feel respect and you know, to take pride in your own culture tradition, where you come from. So these are the range of aspirations that we should be talking about.

NDTV: Do we need to actually redefine aspiration? So do we need to redefine our challenges as well? You pointed out that hunger is still of course a reality. Prof Amartya Sen said that point, but are we looking at new challenges today? And I am glad to welcome for the first time on NDTV Dialogues, hopefully it wont be the last time, Mr Shaurya Doval joins us, of the India Foundation. And of course the India Foundation has just organised a conference in Goa and I think Mr Doval, one reason perhaps of the India Foundation Council is to reclaim a space, which you felt has been dominated too much by perhaps certain agenda. Do you think that it is really also about changing what agendas dominate? Are political debates, which are dominating the arguements or the dialogue we are currently having?

Shaurya Doval: Yes, both yes, both yes and no. Because I think that what this Conclave is really about, if you want me to talk about the Conclave, the Conclave is really to project the Indian view on issues and there has been an Indian view on issues and Indian perspective on issues. All that we are now trying to do is trying to project it more visibly, so that's really what the Conclave is about. But coming back to your earlier question, which was what the other panelist have been saying, I think you know, people are making, exactly everybody seems to be agreeing that the aspirations are not uni-dimensional, they are multi-dimensional. There are economic aspirations. I think in 2015 India and Indians want to economically grow, everybody wants to be economically upwardly mobile. So whether we take it at the bottom, where people are still struggling with hunger, to our middle class, and all the way up, people want an economic growth which is upwardly mobile, which invariably leads towards what the Prime Minister's been talking about, which will have to been an employment driven economic growth. People are indeed looking for, I think in society, fairness. They are looking for justice, they are looking for things, whether it's marginalised sections of society, whether it's the middle class, whether it's women, everybody wants the system which is just and fair. People want security. People are seeing the environment around them and people want to stay, in their aspirations of 2015 definitely be also about a safe and secure environment in which people can pursue both their economic and social aspirations. And then finally I think the point about a responsive state; I think in 2015 we are going to see much more aspiration from people across our political structure, about a political system, which is more responsive to their needs. So I think it will be a multi-dimensional 2015 in terms of aspirations of Indians.

NDTV: Just one quick point which you raised in the beginning of the answer. When you said this is about the India perspective, is it the perspective that you also saying is different from the idea of India, which is a term used very often, an Idea of India that we have seen often dominate discourse in the last decade?

Shaurya Doval: Well, not just in the last decade I think, you know there has been for thousands of years an Indian perspective on issues. In the last few years there has been, you know India has lost that intellectual leadership that we had for centuries, in being a place where the wise and the learned debated, discussed and India provided intellectual leadership and solutions to many of the world's humanity problems. In the last few years we have become a consumer of ideas and ideologies and I think what all that we are trying, in our very humble way, is to try and project and just trying to continue with that long tradition of reclaiming that space of global leadership in intellectual thought, and that's what we need, what this conclave is about.

NDTV: Prof Sen, in your book, The Argumentative Indian that you have touched on many of these points as well, but when we look at an Indian leadership and I think there's been a lot about the government talking about global policy, very strong robust leadership, which has seen to be emerging globally, do you feel that that is perhaps a change which will be very crucial for India in 2015, perhaps how India has...?
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Amartya Sen: I agree with the point that he's making, that there is a kind of an Indian perspective, which has been historically important. It is not the various mythology about one kind of hot button science of today being done six million years, six thousand years ago, not that.

NDTV: Mixing up the two, is there a danger, when we say Indian that it has to be Vedic or somebody's version of it?

Amartya Sen: No, there is nothing wrong with Vedic actually, I think.

NDTV: No, I think it's how the term is been used.

Amartya Sen: But it's really is a question of whether we are looking at science and I think, as Mr Doval is saying, an intellectual aspect as opposed to pursuing imaginary aspect. If you look at the intellectual aspect I think there is a lot to be proud of. There is a long continuity and I'm speaking without bias, Sanskrit was my second language, English was my third; not so much that my Sanskrit was excellent, but it was pretty good, but my English was awful. But one of the things to be recognised is the tradition you mentioned kindly in my book Argumentative Indian; it's a very long tradition in India but it's beginning. It's very early. Now Nalanda University, which we are trying to revive, NK and I, both in the Board of that, and one of the striking things in that when Chinese students come, by the way Nalanda is the only institute of higher education outside China that to which any ancient Chinese ever went for higher education. One of the things that you will find out on arrival in 7th century, saying that one of the big differences in method of education here is that while in China is familiar lectures and listening, here is much more argumentation. Every thing is a debate. There is a thesis. There is a counter thesis. There is an argument. So when I called my book Argumentative Indian I don't think I could be accused of inventing something that doesn't exist. It did exist and I think they found, as I understood Mr Doval's point to be, that if there is an intellectual feature of India of which we have reason to be proud and I think our argumentative tradition is one of the things we have reason to be proud of; to reassert it, to assert it more strongly, to make use of it in politics, in economic debate. I mean for example when we were discussing, I believe that hunger still remains a big thing, education is being solved, safety is being solved, mobility is being solved, but the absence of health care is probably is the biggest, biggest difference. In India we ought to have argument on that and what really worries me is when the media, so what I think in school context is called attention deficit syndrome, is not be able to stick to the point about how terrible the health care system in India is, in terms of just out of pocket system and the absence of good public health care is probably the biggest issue from which people suffer.

NDTV: And whether those issues actually come up at all. But Shekhar Gupta I just wanted to bring you in because the aspect that Prof Amartya Sen touched on and you had just written also about this whole thing of forward looking vision. And when Mr Modi would perhaps to, well like Prime Minister Nehru, to base a bit on a scientific vision and not get caught up sometimes by some of the statements made. We had recently an MP in Parliament talking about some mumbo jumbo and then saying, oh but this is in Vedic times. Does that message get blurred? Yes.of Uttarakhand.

Shekhar Gupta: He is a former Chief Minister. He is not just an MP.

NDTV: Exactly. Does that line get, blurred when we talk about that Indian perspective? Very interesting because everybody on this table, perhaps, may have a different version of what an Indian perspective is.

Shekhar Gupta: Look, I think first of all go back to the expression Vedic, I agree with Prof Sen there is nothing wrong with the word Vedic, there is nothing wrong with the description Vedic.

NDTV: Or with Sanskrit

Shekhar Gupta: Yes,,but what is wrong is passing of every mythology, in every nonsensical belief of total intellectual, scientific, cultural and moral superiority over the whole world, as something Vedic. If the Vedic tradition was argumentative all of India didn't, the world did not flock to India, only Chinese scholars would. If foreign universities did not come to India because they were given doctrine, they came to India because they could argue with Indians...

Amartya Sen: Can I just complement that? I totally agree with Shekhar. We have different times. We have Vedic times, we have the Upanishad times, we have the Epic times; we have the classical, scientific, literature times. Then we have the period of Islamic civilisation and its impact on India and then of course westernisation and all that. But if you look at the Vedic times, we think of the Song of Creation in the Rig Vedas, what does it say? Now the song is about who made this world. Was there someone who actually made it and if someone made it does he remember he made it? And the last line says perhaps he does and the absolute last line says perhaps he does not. Gita for example, there are two points of view, Arjun and Krishna and a religious document you might think that only one wins. But in the epic context both perspectives are given great weight. That tradition we have every reason to be proud of. But peculiar things in science which we never did and which didn't exist, these are not.

NDTV: Prof Yogendra Yadav, on that aspect we have looked at health and education, ironic that we of course have talked of Nalanda University. When we talk of Nalanda University reviving that tradition, that our today's universities are not even in the top 200 of the world, when you look at that mismatch of where our educational capabilities are, what the aspirations of students are, do you think that that's going to be one of the big challenges of 2015? That the new government, a new India must address?

Yogendra Yadav: Indeed we must begin by thinking about schools in the first place. Look, let's admit the entire RTE thing has collapsed. I don't think it's bogus.

NDTV: The enrollment levels are over 98%.

NK Singh: But you look at outcomes, those are zilch. Outcomes, Yadav is right, are plummeting.

Yogendra Yadav: RTE was never meant to get you enrollment. Enrollment had happened by the time RTE came. It was about quality of education in the schools, and let's admit, I personally do not think RTE was bogus. I think there are some hastily designed provisions, as always, in Indian laws but the implementation of RTE has brought about almost nothing in the country. That's where our challenge begin, the entire the quality of school education. Yes we have buildings; yes we have enrollments, sometimes more than 100 percent; but the real problem is that there is no attention to the quality of education and unfortunately there is no way to even begin to measure whether children actually learn anything inside the schools at all.

NDTV: Mr Doval, also when we talk about these issues, Prof Yadav referred to RTE, but when we talk about schemes, MNREGA, when we talk about PDS system, the argument that the new India or the young India, which has voted Mr Modi in the new government in such an overwhelming numbers, is looking for change. But are we sometimes being too hasty in throwing out the baby with the bath water? That are we looking at perhaps just repackaging, we are not looking at outcomes? We are not looking at actual efficacy of actual implementation; we are just renaming schemes? One is swachh Bharat. The UPA will say, oh we had this scheme; it's all the same old schemes and different names and what's happening on the ground is not changing.

Shekhar Gupta: Nirmal Bharat Abhiyaan

NDTV: Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan for instance; I mean that was really a flagship scheme, but on the ground implementation is still way behind. As an observer of what's currently happening, do you think that, do you think that there is perhaps some blurring of goals, perhaps because of the political churn we are seeing in Parliament?

Shaurya Doval: No, I disagree with you Sonia. I think in terms of aspirations, what India wants, I think people are, its very evident and very clear. I mean you have to be blind or you don't have to, you don't, you are not sensitised enough if you can't see it. I think that the challenge that lies is that the tools and instrumentalities, including the states' apparatus, that we have is not, doesn't have the architecture to deliver on those aspirations. We actually have an architectural problem, that effectively the tools that are available have become so blunt that where, while the aspirations have moved into the 21 century for Indians, the method and methodologies by which we are trying to meet those aspirations are still probably stuck in the 19th or 20th century. And that is the big mismatch. And I think that is what the new government should be looking to do. And I think that's what the Prime Minister is trying to do when he tries to link those new aspirations by newer methods of solving those, because this is also clearly established. Speaker after speaker has said, you know, the same instruments are not going to work. They haven't worked in the past. So when he talks about Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan now, if that means involving communities, you can't rely on just on the Municipality or the health department. Or you have got to bring about attitudinal changes if you have got to. That's what progressive and modern society has, everywhere else in the world, has done in tackling social issues. Social issues are such not the responsibility of the government. We have got to take it out from the state and bring it back on to the communities. So I think, you know, that's really where the challenge will lie, as we look in to 2015, it's that. While our aspirations are galloping as a nation, rightly so, we are not building capacities and capabilities in a commensurate manner to meet them. And I think, that's really my view, the challenge of this government or would be the challenge of any government. That's why I think with the last government, also in some sense, failed because they just could not bridge the gap between the aspirations and their delivery became so wide.

NDTV: When we see the scenes in Parliament, if the Insurance Bill comes up, even if the BJP and Congress may agree that it will be the same old, TMC has replaced the Left in the sense that it is being more left than the Left, the same old opposition politics. When you see Modi may promise a new kind of governance, the BJP government may have not kept up with it, but Mr Modi promises a new kind of governance, the opposition in a sense is binding together. What's happening in Bihar only on an anti-Modi plank; where is the new opposition when we talk about a new government?

Shekhar Gupta: Every old opposition becomes a new government, that's the law of democracy

NDTV: That's what Modi challenged in a way

Shekhar Gupta: Mr Modi has to go backwards then. When BJP blocked Parliament for 7 years, more than 5 years definitely, but almost 7 years; in fact I once wrote an article in sheer exasperation that why is the BJP acting as if it believes it will never come into power? Because when you come to power the other side can do the same thing, right? So today if you ask Congress people they'll say you got fed up in two weeks, you did this to us for so many years. Then there is more by saying that you had so many mega scandals, that doesn't matter. Somebody from the Congress will say attacking freedom of religion is a bigger scandal. So this is the blood feud in our politics. It needs statesmanship on both sides and both sides have lacked it. When Congress was in power, it is the ruling party's responsibility to run Parliament, when Congress was in power who did they reach out to in the BJP? The PM said I can't talk to Mr Advani, so if Kamal Nath goes and talks to somebody in BJP everybody knows that even the PM doesn't have power there. How many times did Sonia Gandhi invite the Leader of Opposition or the head of the BJP for a meal? So it is the Congress Party frankly more than the BJP, which defined this relationship as a relationship of enmity to begin with. BJP, the moment they saw the Congress Party weak they fully returned the compliment. They figured that the weapon they had was not letting laws pass. They thought that we'll come to power and we'll pass them, not realising that even with 44 someplace and 70 some place you can still block Parliament. Like remember Telangana, few MPs, they might bring a pepper spray one day, so I think even now it is for Mr. Modi to reach out to the Congress and say look, let bygones be bygones. I'm sorry about what my party was doing. I wasn't there, but this is a wrong thing and let everybody agree not to disrupt. Because having disrupted them, having used disruption as a legitimate weapon I think all top leaders of the BJP are on record for having said that disruption is a legitimate weapon. Disruptions were for set up a committee, set up a JPC. In this case PM should make a statement on conversions right? So you have to break this vicious cycle and it has to be done by the man in power.

NDTV: Let me get in Mr Yadav on that. As your earlier avatar as political analyst, AAP many felt reflected on the urge of new politics, so the Opposition in a way has decimated them. Mostly they seem to be floundering in the last few months, you've got some sensing of cobbling together in Bihar and some in the Assembly elections in UP with the Samajwadi Party winning. But the fear that that the political parties, which the Opposition are not seeing, is the aspiration, the new politics, which is not about disruption of the Parliament, even though the BJP, may have done it first or the Congress may have done it first, that's not what the average person watching TV wants to see. In Delhi as well, the stigma which came with the AAP when Mr Kejriwal stepped down from power, you've seen the result in the recent Lok Sabha elections, can you come out of that? What will really define the new politics, not just of AAP but of all parties now in 2015?

Yogendra Yadav: I keep looking at this viciousness, as Shekhar has rightly pointed out. It appears to me that this viciousness does not come from the fact that differences are big. It's precisely because differences are almost non-existent, especially when it comes to a theater in the Parliament, BJP versus Congress, they are just switching roles right now.

NDTV: And now it's TMC as well

Yogendra Yadav: And others joining in. What strikes me about much of this is lack of fresh ideas, policy proposals. It's actually the bereft of that that we resort to this kind of a theater, all questions of economy that you're talking about. What amazes me is our ability to conflict means and ends. Those who want welfare to be done are absolutely convinced that the methods thought about around 80 years ago would work thereafter. That is complete wooden-headedness and those who have discovered that some of these means wouldn't work, that they are counterproductive, then go on to challenge those very ends. I'm actually very seriously worried that talking about equity, talking about justice in this country is now somewhat unfashionable. It is hard to talk about this in respectable circles like this. This is reason to be totally worried about, that's all this confliction of means and ends is about. Thinking of politics, I think we need a fresh idea on new kind of politics. All this comes from new kinds of ideas. If you don't have that, you'll have the kind of theater that happened.

NDTV: Prof Amartya Sen come in on that. Your critics have often accused the House of being woodenheaded in looking at some of the ways to address these issues we've talked about and of course address in his book. About MNREGA, PDS are all aspects, which I think NK will be one of them to question the outcomes of this. What's wrong with looking at this in a new way, addressing the problem of hunger etc?

Yogendra Yadav: I think Prof Sen has actually been very different from all other wooden headed scholars.

NDTV: I never said you're the critic. I said some of the critics have accused him of that.  

Amartya Sen: MNREGA and food schemes etc that the governemnt is continuing with great enthusiasm and fighting WTO, I think the point that you're really trying to make is really central. We have to think about equity, justice and so on, and its not the case that there is nothing learnt, I mean 40 years ago when I talked about the need for universal health care along with universal education and how good Kerala was at achieving something. I got an enormous amount of plastering, on the grounds that Kerala was the third poorest state at that time. I didn't think it was. How could it afford it? The argument is that one could afford it because education and health care are labour intensive efforts.

NDTV: You can't afford not to in a sense.

Amartya Sen: Low wages, you're also to do the same, physical achievement costs money so it is affordable and I also argued that from the history of Japan, Korea, Taiwan and now China too, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, elementary education and health care produces an enormous fillip in the economic growth. Sometimes I am delighted that NK pointed out that I have never been anti-growth. The point is that education of how to achieve growth and taken that, what do we do with the growth. Now there is nothing as important than to increase the growth rate as well as equity as basic education. Now look at say Kerala. It has now the highest per capita income in India. People don't turn around and say when we criticise you for praising so called Kerala you were mistaken. Look at Kerala now. I never hear that. On the other hand the fact is that they have grown much faster than others. People don't even recognise that it has the highest per capita income in the country.

Shekhar Gupta: No, no, I am just being a good Haryanvi. Yogendra and I take great pride that Haryana has the highest per capita income.

Amartya Sen: If you look at the two together in per caita income Haryana is one of the highest. It's one of the top three. Actually the interesting point is that the other states that are also somewhat similar ones, including Himachal Pradesh, have also have big bumps in their per capita income. Kerala is absolutely the highest.

NDTV: Prof. Sen, the discourse has been over the Gujarat model. No one ever talks of the Kerala model.

Amartya Sen: Gujarat is 7th highest. That's not a bad position, but it's not the highest. Six are above you. The interesting thing is that one of the things that was frustrating in the electoral debate is that the actual data people had almost no interest in, You say something, Haryana has the highest and it's repeated again and again and again and that becomes true. There are the aspirations we are thinking about for 2015, I would say two. One is to concentrate on what our aims are, not just for one quarter of people but for all Indians; and two, to look at actual numbers. Not just go by media created myths about a member, which you can't even contradict. The moment you contradict people say no, that's not what we have read in the newspaper. I think we ought to. If there is anything, India has many reasons to be proud. We were one of the first countries in the world to have the National Sample Survey. We have better data in India than any developing country in the world. And I only wish that we would use these numbers and understand from the data what the picture is. Then that combine with the point that we have to keep our eyes on the ends, and not just on MNREGA or cutting taxes or on any other thing, just to see what they are doing to the life of others, specially to the poor people in India.

NK Singh: Well, let me address that in just three brief comments. I think that when I look to 2015 what is the qualitative difference, which the Modi style of governance is going to make to India? I think one other thing, which you bring enormously to the table is the experience of a very successful Chief Minister of Gujarat who brought about spectacular improvements in Gujarat. There have been many multiple parameters, the unique ability to implement without time and cost overruns. I mean in just sheer numbers that there are lakhs, crores worth of projects that are lying stranded. There is public money locked in, nobody is getting the benefit of this. To be able to re-energize is by the method of governance and by a close eye on implementations and outcomes. I think this is the enormous change in the quality of the governance in powering the bureaucracy, in protecting bonafide decisions of the bureaucracy, in being able to cut across inter-ministerial tangles, in having a coordination mechanism in the PM's office, which is able to do so. I think this is very important governance change.

NDTV: I am just going to get in Mr Doval who has been patiently listening. Mr Doval, it is interesting what Prof Yadav said just now, we will also touch on every instance that's been said, but I want to bring in what Prof Yadav said that it's not fashionable to talk about issues like hunger and malnutrition anymore. It's not in sync with the mood of a new India where we see the Prime Minister making many Indians proud, a sell out at Madison Square Garden, in Australia the rock star welcome that he is getting; what does seem to become fashionable in drawing rooms is the belief that oh, I'll never let my son marry a Muslim. Finally we can teach minorities a lesson. That discourse does seem to have gained credence now, even though the PM, to be fair, has said very strongly to his MPs that I don't want anything to divert on development. But there is a new discourse in the country, which is worrying.

Shekhar Gupta: In fact the objection will be greater if your daughter was marrying a Muslim

NDTV: Daughter marrying a Muslim or a Christian. As I said, I have sat in many drawing rooms where it may not have been discussed earlier, but this is now out in the open. Worrying towards aspirations and the challenges, the point that we don't only look at growth as an economy from what the growth rate is, but also we don't look at the nation by how inclusive it is. Do you think that is been left out in the India story of today?

Shaurya Doval: I have no data to come to that conclusion that indeed that is happening. I don't know how much that drawing room conversation is happening for wanting to make a thesis that indeed is the case that things like that have changed. But I think, when I was hearing some of the speakers earlier, I think linking politics and outcomes of a lot of these aspirations and challenges to just electoral outcomes is probably not the right way to look at it. Elections are won and lost because of some of these reasons, but there are many other reasons, there are many other contributing factors that decide electoral outcomes. India had an election. We finished with an election in 2014 and we have sort of done away with it for the next 5 years. I think what is more important now is to debate how are we going to meet the challenges. I think they linking every thing to the electoral outcome, linking it to politics etc, is not correct. Secondly what I was pointing out is that there are many things Sonia that can happen simultaneously; fact that we have to talk about hunger and deal with hunger; fact that we have also to talk about inclusive politics. These are very, very important topics. These are very important aspects on which the society, the states, the nation must be working But it is equally important that India asserts itself and there is a pride in Indianness and the PM gets a rocking welcoming. And all these three narratives, in my view, exist in parallel in society today. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. They are quite complementary. So, I think the critical part in 2015 that I think we should really give some break to this whole sort of obsession in electoral politics. Elections will come. Elections will be fought. Sometimes they will be won; sometimes they will be lost. During those times we can discuss them. But for the rest part, there are serious issues and challenges that I, you know we should be debating on how. I don't think anybody that I have heard has said that economic development should not be there, that fairness should not be there, social inclusion should not be there. So what somebody says in Parliament should not dominate the debate. As Prof Sen was saying, we should be looking at facts, we should be looking at numbers, we should be looking at saying how can we make it a much more informed discourse in trying to address the challenges that the country faces.

NDTV: Thank you. Prof Sen final words then on the debate tonight that we started, when you had told me that you are happy with what Prime Minister Modi has done so far from talking on the ramparts of the Red Fort on toilets and sanitation, but a more overall view. But the same question I asked Mr Doval. When we look at India in 2015 and its various aspects, do you have notes of caution? What would you like to say, perhaps to the present government and also to the Opposition on how we should lead it and to people of India?

Amartya Sen: The main issue in my mind, that came very well in this discussion I think, is challenge of development as NK said, even if you deal with MNREGA. I don't know why it has become such a big issue. I feel delighted debating about it. But he made just a right point that employment sustenance is very important. But the structure was so bad that it led to loss of capital that should not be. I totally agree with that. Mr Doval said just now, very importantly, about the elections, they come and go but we have to really look at the substantial debate as per the others. And Shekhar, also discussing how the ends are really important things to look at, and look at the actual data, all that is very important. What I think is rather important a way, in my judgment, you ask whether I warmed towards Modi's speech from the top of Red Fort, yes I did. But there was something else that was quite important and this doesn't make it quite clear on the subject of secularism, even though I know Mr. Modi has not been pursuing a very anti-secular agenda in any way, but on the other hand there is a major difference between us on that, there is no question. There is no question. But I think what had happened towards the end of the last regime, we Indians were losing a lot of faith that we can do things. And there was just a sense that this just cannot be done. Even when things on corruption as Prof Yadav was saying important, well that is gone and it cannot be done. So I think in some way that note says yes we can, we can change things. That was a very important point to make. Now the details of what should be done, especially in the history, culture and so on will not be necessarily same in between the present government and me. On the other hand the idea that we could sit and say yes we can do it, I say it is very welcoming.

NDTV: So in that context Mr. Modi's foreign visits abroad had been criticized by the Opposition, do you think that was actually the part of changing the mood of people, that yes we can?

Amartya Sen: I don't comment on the point. I think we attached too much importance to foreign views. We attach too much importance to people who live abroad. I am a total Indian

NDTV: So you still stand in line for visas at foreign embassies? No, his receptions he got in his visits abroad?

Amartya Sen: That is too important for people who live abroad. I am totally an Indian citizen. I am a teacher in an American University. I too stand in lines for visas I can tell you. Three hours in one case. But a lot of people who are NRIs don't do that because they are Americans, British, and French and Italian. And I think we have to look at whether the Indians could start thinking that we may have big problem, inefficiency; corruption; then lack of equity. But we can change it. And that I think in that context, I don't think Mr Doval was denying, he was right to say elections come and go. But the electoral context that came through very clear. And while I agree to what Mr Doval has said, that elections come and go, it was a lesson for every political party. If the Congress ever revives then they will have to think about that how can we be a party that can claim to be achieving things. They couldn't even for those things they have achieved: the elimination of Polio, the stopping of the AIDs epidemic, can't you think that they could have achieved. There was almost no attempt to engage in saying we have done this and we can do more.

Shekhar Gupta: Because if they say that, you have to give credit to their government, which the party did not want to do. Because Rahul Gandhi ran his entire campaign was saying we are messed up.

NDTV: But I just want to get on this whole issue of secularism. Secularism is seen now as a word to mock. Secularism is not fashionable anymore when we talk about it. Do you think its something we should worry about? Do you also need to redefine secularism? India first, which is obviously Modi's slogan, that means why special treatment for minorities? Why should it be here in the first place?

Yogendra Yadav: I am glad that you are talking about it. Because the programme would have been incomplete if we had not noticed this part of the challenge. There is a creeping soft majoritarianism. Many seculars thought that the challenge for secularism will come from the top, the government will issue some laws and constitutional amendments. Nothing of that sort is going to happen. Mr Modi has made just a right kind of noise that you need to. It's crowd sourcing of communalism. My own sense is that that is not from where the challenge is going to come from. The challenge is crowd sourcing of communalism. In this country you can do a lot of things by a wink and a nod. You don't need to change the Constitution. This is what is happening on the secular front. Minorities are anxious. Lots of things, which could not be talked about a year ago, have become quite commonsensical; have become mainstream talk. The kind of lunacies that we have been talking for the last few weeks, would we be debating one year ago? Would many of these get one tenth of the news time that you are giving today? These are the things that the country needs to be worried about. My answer is not to go back to the Congress-style secularism. It had actually, honestly, become a way of keeping minorities hostage. We need to reinvent it.

NDTV: Or Samajwadi Party and Trinamool because they are as blatant about minoritarianism as they say

Yogendra Yadav: All of them had the same style. All of them have said it to the Muslims, which is to say that we will give you security. In case you forget, we will engineer situations that will remind you that we are giving you security. Don't ask for water; don't ask for electricity, no roads; no education. That fraudulent secularism has to be snatched. But the answer to that is not this creeping, soft majoritarianism, but in a sense the entire intelligentsia of the country is buying into it. That is a moment where we need to stand up and insist. We need to stand up and remember the deeper idea of secularism and the civilisation that our country has inherited. And that to my mind is a challenge even when we come to talk about those silly debates of Sanskrit versus German. The issue was not silly. The manner in which it was debated was silly, because the only enthusiasm for tradition is matched only by complete ignorance of tradition. That's really what is happening in the country. So we need to debate these issues. We need to come up with a new way to look at secularism. We need to look for the economic welfare debate. We need to recast it where we can be agnostic about the means, absolutely clear about our ends. And we need to rethink the political aspirations of self-governance as well. India 1.0 needs to move on to India 2.0 but the answer to that is not to go back to some of the failed answers of the 50 years, both in politics as much as in economy and culture.

Shekhar Gupta: Last word, I think we discussed so many things. What Yogendra said going to 2015, social cohesion will be a very important challenge. And Modi has to find that with this majoritarianism I don't think its creeping, I think its much more rapid that that, and much more visible than that. He has to find a way of keeping it all together

NK Singh: And a more credible economic strategy, genuinely inclusive. Nobody is disagreeing to what Yogendra Yadav said. That it cannot only be the economy; it cannot be the economy divested of the other aspects in which inclusiveness is growth. I agree that this kind of a thing which went on, if you improve life quality, if you improve roads, infrastructure, education, health it benefits all segments. It is the approach that Mr Modi has consistently followed. And I do not think differentiating between segments of population is a right approach towards development, to bring about an overall development of the economy and overall economy and social development that benefits every segment of the population. And that's the India we should look for. Get rid of the paralysis of the last 10 years of the failed decade and move India into a higher economic growth trajectory.

NDTV: Mr. Singh, thank you very much. Prof Amartya Sen, any last words from you? You would like to come in the debate or you are okay with it? You are not worried with the recent noise with these MPs etc?

Amartya Sen: No I agree with the point been made secularism is a very important subject. it is also a very big part of our long tradition. I think also on Shekhar's point that the issue of social cohesion is very central.

NDTV: If you would have some advice for Mr Modi would this be the area that needs more focus? Advising one Prime Minister was bad enough. You had a friendly conversation with Mr. Singh many times.

Amartya Sen: Actually I am not going on such a counter factual exercise. I don't advise any Prime Minister. He was a classmate of mine, that doesn't mean I am his advisor.

NDTV: You were blamed for so much of the economics of UPA 1 and UPA 2.
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Amartya Sen: Well I mean that's not by me, I had no hand in it.

NDTV: Thank you all very much for joining me this evening, thank you. 
 
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