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propertied had done quite well for themselves. Enclave-based growth beneted few outside the enclaves. In capital-intensive growth, there was little impact on employment. Lately the question has been about the impact of growth on the environment and therefore on the natural resource base. More generally, it is about the relative shares of prots and wages in national income and whether the former is growing at the expense of the latter. But the issue of distribution has always been a red rag for the propertied class. Questions about who benets more and who benets less have been converted into the red herring of growth vs distribution and then dismissed with sophistry. To ask if it is not better to bake a larger cake rather than distribute the one on the table is to pose the question in a manner such that the answer selects itself. Any contestation then appears absurd. One would not be aware of any of these issues from the media presentation of contesting views. Shallow the current debate may be, but there is a politics at play here. The growth vs distribution poser is set against the larger backdrop of the National Food Security Ordinance. The manufactured debate is but a direct attack on plans for food security. In the process one is unfortunately witness to even doubts being expressed about the true scale of malnutrition in the country. The pernicious aspect of this debate is that the Bhagwati vs Sen perspective has been put in Narendra Modi vs Rahul Gandhi terms. To clad the respective positions of the two economists as the media sees them in larger electoral terms is to play a dangerous game in which the framework has been set up and the outcome decided. Modis publicity machine has successfully portrayed him as a doer, while Rahul Gandhi is the bumbling heir who was born with a silver spoon. Therefore Bhagwati must be right and Sen wrong in economic policy prescriptions. This combined with Sens remarks about Narendra Modis better-known persona as chief minister when more than 2,000 Muslims were butchered in Gujarat has been enough to bring out the armies of social media and small-time political leaders who have made the vilest of comments. The growing intolerance of a section of the urban middle class has been on full display. The silly season has become an ugly season.
EPW
august 3, 2013
vol xlviII no 31