When the Nobel academy asked Amartya Sen (who won the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 1998) to donate something personal to its museum in Stockholm, he gave two items from his school days — a copy of Aryabhatiya’s book on mathematics which he had read in Sanskrit in school, and his old bike.

Over the years, he has often been asked what was common between the two and he would respond, “a great deal”. You see, Sanskrit and maths were two of his favourite subjects in school. In fact, by his own admission, he was “enchanted by the literature in Sanskrit”.

The bike played a significant role in his research. He went on it, collecting data from villages near Shantiniketan — on famine, malnutrition among children, gender, and inequality — which has gone on to shape his oeuvre.

Amartya Sen meditates on the multi-faceted, multi-layered problems facing India, offering simple and home-grown solutions

The Country of First Boys is a compendium of 13 of Sen’s essays. Edited by his daughter Antara Dev Sen and his son-in-law Pratik Kanjilal, the book is dedicated very aptly to schoolteachers and health workers since most of Sen’s work is about the absence of good elementary education and basic good healthcare for a huge mass of India’s underprivileged. As he points out in the introduction to the book, “in a democracy these abysmal failures should receive massive political attention.”

Written over a passage of 15 years, most of these essays were published in The Little Magazine. They are presented in chronological order in the book which gives the reader a delightful personal insight into the way Sen connects history, literature, culture, economics and politics to everyday Indian life.

But what is even more significant is that some of what was written over 15 years ago is still as relevant today; the issues raised will resonate with today’s readers, especially those in South Asia.

Through his essays Sen offers a peep into his life — his privileged background and his close relationship with Tagore. By his own admission, learning Sanskrit at an early age shaped Sen. At the same time the book unfurls various facets of his personality, paradoxically making him more enigmatic, while at the same time rendering him human and reachable. For one, he is innately curious about the world around him. “I do want to know about a lot of things.”

Sen points out that resolutions to Asia’s problems — ideas in steering foreign policy, sustainable living, economic growth — may not be found incubating at, say Harvard, Oxford or Cambridge. Organic solutions to Asia’s woes have to be found closer to home. He believes in a “greater role of humanities in Indian education”; a strong and flourishing right-wing party that is secular and not communal; and left-wing parties that are more clear-minded and concentrated on removing severe deprivation of the downtrodden would help India move forward.

The editors of the book, in the preface state at the outset that they desisted from updating the essays as it would have led to “doctoring” the record. There are two essays ‘What difference can Tagore make’ and ‘A wish a day for a week’, that appear in print for the first time.

The title of the book is also the title of one of the essays and is about the Indian education system’s obsession with the grades of students. It also discusses the many different options available to those from privileged backgrounds, and the dearth of any for those from underprivileged families.

There are several recurring themes in The Country of First Boys — the notion of identity and the difference it makes, equity, and justice. But the essays can also be seen under three broad themes: culture, society, and policy.

Each article is packed with vast information and backed by history and literature. It is as if Sen is having a conversation with his readers. His thought process is clear and succinct and complemented by his command over the English language, peppered with the right amount of wit. Sen points out what ails India, indentifies the obstacles, and then goes about ways to remove them. He believes an independent and democratic country should be able to overcome its own problems, and this is repeatedly pointed out in the essay, ‘A wish a day for a week’.

“We can do things if we put our mind to it,” he writes. “India’s social achievements record is low but where ever they’ve tried — Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh — education and healthcare have surged ahead and so have economic growth.”

At another place he points out that India may not have a high incidence of rape; “the difficulty is in getting the police to cooperate ... to get society to take greater interest in sexual assaults on vulnerable women, particularly from the poorer and less privileged classes and castes.”

He loves the Vedas yet is not a passionate believer in Hindutva and dispels the popular understanding that the book is not about religion but deals with “human behaviour” as well.

Sen aims to be apolitical but warns that suppressing dissent can come at the cost of undermining democracy. He was particularly rankled when the government wanted him removed from Nalanda University as its chancellor. He acquiesced but publically shared his reluctance to leave; staying would have meant fighting the government all the time thereby not remaining an “effective” leader.

“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,” he writes in the essay ‘On Nalanda University’, in which he criticises Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for instituting Hindutva elements in academic, scientific and cultural institutions. He warned that that suppression of dissent can undermine a functional democracy.

In the same essay, Sen talks about the revival of the Nalanda University (the first class began in 2014) which in itself makes for an enthralling read. He also points out that resolutions to Asia’s problems — ideas in steering foreign policy, sustainable living, economic growth — may not be found incubating at, say Harvard, Oxford or Cambridge. Organic solutions to Asia’s woes have to be found closer to home.

Many of the solutions are there for the taking. For example, Sen believes in a “greater role of humanities in Indian education”; a strong and flourishing right-wing party that is secular and not communal; and left-wing parties that are more clear-minded and concentrated on removing severe deprivation of the downtrodden would help India move forward.

The essay ‘The smallness thrust upon us’ touches upon the notion of identity; Sen warns how propagation of a ‘singular identity’ based on religion, nationality, race or caste “has been responsible for a great deal of violence.” Again, this essay should resonate well with Pakistani readers who are grappling with increased intolerance within the country.

But whichever essay you pick up to read, you will find that Sen’s preoccupation with persistent deprivations continues to haunt him, and should also give the readers sleepless nights. The essays, ‘Hunger: old torments and new blunders’ and ‘Sunlight and other fears: the importance of school education’ highlight the plight of India’s poor, especially its children and their continued neglect.

He finds it remarkable that “India has more hungry people” than any country in the world and still the phenomenon receives so little attention, not just from governments but also from the prosperous and influential.

It’s not the bleakness of their situation — where a child’s day begins without a meal, without a school to go to, stalked by disease and nothing to look forward to — that he finds “tragic”, but the fact that these deprivations are not difficult to combat and are all well within India’s economic means. He believes children remain in this abhorrent condition because of a lack of political and social engagement, and not because of lack of resources.

At the same time, he raps the media on their knuckles for the “lack of interest” of the rich including businessmen and professionals with regards to matters of inequality and deprivation. He asserts that because the media only caters to the concerns of the rich, it is biased in its coverage and has managed to make the underprivileged seem invisible.

The reviewer is a freelance journalist.

The Country of First Boys
(ESSAYS)
By Amartya Sen
Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198738183
328pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 24th, 2016