Thursday, 05 August 2010 19:56 Mizzima News
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) - Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen on Tuesday denounced the policy of Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government regarding engagement with Burma. The Harvard professor spent part of his childhood in Mandalay.
His comments were delivered directly to the Indian leader who was attending the “Centrality of Literacy” symposium in New Delhi.
“I don’t agree with your policy on Burma. In a democratic country like India, I can say this to the Prime Minister,” the Press Trust of India quoted Professor Sen as saying.
India gave Burmese military leader Senior General Than Shwe red-carpet treatment during the visit by his entourage of more than 80 junta ministers and their wives last month. The countries signed deals to co-operate on security and legal issues, and in the infrastructure and energy sectors.
While the Nobel laureate’s comments might have little influence over India’s Burma policy or the Indian public it would have an impact on its academic community, Jaya Jaitly, a former President of the Samata Party, said.
“To my surprise, he spoke about democracy and politics. He is an economist, so he usually speaks about poverty. It is unusual for him to be commenting on politics. I assumed that he wanted to criticise the political relationship between India and Burma”, Jaitly told Mizzima.
Professor Sen, 76, received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in welfare economics in 1998. He finished his PhD in economics from Cambridge University in Britain in 1959 and is now the Thomas W. Lamont university professor and professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University in the United States.
Before the Second World War, Sen lived in Burma from the age of three to six while his father was visiting professor at Mandalay College.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
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