Nayanar kicks up a row over Oommen's book on Amartya Sen

By Our Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, DEC. 28. The Chief Minister, Mr. E. K. Nayanar, has kicked up a row over the inferences contained in a book authored by Prof. M. A. Oommen and brought out by the State Institute of Languages in connection with the Nobel laureate, Prof. Amartya Sen's visit to Kerala.

Mr. Nayanar has taken strong exception to Prof. Oommen's observation that the rich-poor divide in Kerala is widening and that political parties are also to blame for the fall in the quality of education at the higher levels. He has accused Prof. Oommen of having failed to understand the Kerala situation in the proper perspective and even hinted at the possibility of the senior Fellow of the Delhi-based Institute of Social Sciences having "consciously or unconsciously" fallen prey to the influence of `anti-labour thinking'.

Prof. Oommen is the chairman of the committee which organised the three-day national conference on education in Kerala which concluded here today. Prof. Sen, incidentally, came down to Kerala primarily to inaugurate the conference. Prof. Oommen's book, Amarya Sen's Human Science of Development: An Introductory Study was released at the opening session of the seminar along with a Malayalam translation of Economic Development and Social Opportunities, jointly authored by Prof. Jean Dreze and Prof. Sen.

Mr. Nayanar has made it clear that he would rather cut the niceties and that he finds unpalatable the contents of Chapter 7 of Prof. Oommen's book, The Public Action Theory and Kerala's Development Experience. According to Mr. Nayanar, who has devoted the weekly column appearing in his name in the party organ, Deshabhimani, today to the book, Prof. Oommen has failed to properly understand the term "public action". Instead of "mass intervention", Prof. Oommen has taken it to connote "public action" in a very general sense.

The Chief Minister has also accused Prof. Oommen of having done injustice to Prof. Sen by presenting a "wrong picture" of the State in his book. Prof. Oommen's inferences that have incensed Mr. Nayanar relate to the higher education scene, land reforms, denial of justice to adivasis, resurgence of diseases once believed to have been eradicated, continuing gender inequality and the rising tide of suicides in the State. In his article, Mr. Nayanar wonders how Prof. Oommen could be called an economist when he is unable to see the role of liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation policies in aggravating the State's economic crisis and unemployment.

Mr. Nayanar, who recalls that he had quoted Prof. Amartya Sen in the Assembly and in several of his articles well before he received the Nobel prize, says it is wrong to link the rise in the suicide rate and the economic crisis. He would rather see it as a social problem which needs to be addressed as such. Prof. Oommen's approach, he says, is quite subjective and has, in effect, become "anti-Kerala and reactionary". By using Prof. Amartya Sen's name to present such a viewpoint Prof. Oommen has disgraced the Nobel laureate, Mr. Nayanar concludes. Now, it is over to Prof. Oommen. If not Prof. Sen himself.

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