The Indian fixation with surpassing China’s rate of economic growth is “very stupid” as a measure of the nation’s advancement, Amartya Sen, the world-renowned scholar and Nobel laureate for economics, has warned.
Prof Sen on Tuesday said that such comparisons between the two rising economies were dangerously misguided, and recommended that Indian leaders pay more attention to reducing chronic undernourishment among their country’s 1.2bn people than pursuing ever higher growth targets.
“I don’t think the issue of India and China and which one will have a higher rate of growth is interesting at all,” Prof Sen told students and young entrepreneurs in the Indian capital. “It’s not a serious question how [India’s] 8.5 per cent compares with [China’s] 9.5 per cent.”