Abhijit Bandyopadhyay has just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Although he is an American citizen, he is primarily an Indian and was born in

India. He was a student of Presidency College in Kolkata, just like Amartya Sen

was. Since Abhijit Bandyopadhyay is Bengali we feel he is one of us, it makes

us feel pride as Bengalis. Not too many Bengalis have won Nobel prizes so far,

only four till date. We don’t have much else to be proud of.

Both Amartya Sen and Abhijit Bandyopadhyay have been critical of the present

Indian government. Just the other day Abhijit Bandyopadhyay had declared that

the Indian economy was in a terrible state. The rate of economic growth was

becoming sluggish at an alarming rate, something that the government too was

aware of. That the nation should follow the economic model established during

the Narsimha Rao-Manmohan Singh era is something that even an economist

like Parakala Prabhakar, the husband of the present finance minister Nirmala

Sitharaman, has written about in an essay. Amidst all this the BJP, at least to

some extent, is in a deep fix. Congress leaders have been continuously

clamouring that the government must listen to Abhijit Bandyopadhyay’s advice.

If a Nobel winner appears to be clearly opposed to the policies of a government

then obviously it’s quite discomfiting for the latter to show much enthusiasm

about the former winning an award. Abhijit was a student of the famed

Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. He must have also been an adherent of

leftist thought. In the 80s he had apparently been part of a gherao of the VC

protesting the expulsion of a leftist student leader and spent ten days in Tihar

jail as a result. That was during the Congress era. The same Abhijit is now a

Nobel laureate and the anti-left capitalist government can neither embrace him

nor ignore him.

Even the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus had to face a lot of opposition from

his own country’s government. Not that I believe all Nobel winners deserve

their prizes. Often many unworthy people too have been awarded the prize. I

fail to understand how a commercial bank that charges rates of interest becomes

eligible for a Nobel Peace prize. I also fail to comprehend what sacrifices, what

actions, committed over what length of time, justifies the Peace prizes won by

Henry Kissinger, Barack Obama and Malala Yousafzai.

In the subcontinent we have another instance of a Nobel laureate undergoing

harrowing treatment due to his religious beliefs. Nobel winning Pakistani

theoretical physicist Abdus Salam’s epitaph was defaced and the word ‘Muslim’

was removed from it by unknown people. Even the present government of

Pakistan does not consider Ahmadiyas as Muslims, the community Salam

belonged to. He won the Nobel prize in 1979. The year after he received an

invitation to attend a congratulatory dinner hosted by the Quaid-i-Azam

University in Islamabad. Soon, however, a huge public protest was launched

against him. After Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had capitulated to the demands of Sunni

fundamentalists and declared the Ahmadiyas as non-Muslims in 1974, hatred

for the latter community among the Sunnis was also rapidly on the rise.

Opposed by a protest led by the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami party,

Abdus Salam could not enter Quaid-i-Azam University even after reaching

Islamabad. Thirty-seven years later the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif

christened the physics department of Quaid-i-Azam University as ‘Abdus Salam

Centre for Physics’. However, Imran Khan is virulently anti-Ahmadiya. Abdus

Salam was born in the Punjab province of Pakistan but he could never live out

his days in his country. In 1974 the persecution of the Ahmadiyas by the Sunnis

reached such an extreme that Salam had to leave Pakistan to save himself. Even

books in Pakistani schools don’t mention Abdus Salam as a Pakistani Nobel

laureate.

Abhijit Bandyopadhyay is an American citizen. Amartya Sen is British. Had

they been in India, I don’t know if they would have been able to do the kind of

research that enables one to win the Nobel. Even European researchers today

are migrating to the US because places in Europe can hardly afford to spend as

much as America does on research.

The Nobel prize has been awarded since 1901. Simply by demographic the

largest number of prizes have been won by Jews, while Muslims have won the

least number. Of course, the best thing to do is to categorise Nobel prizes

according to countries and not faith. Nonetheless, Muslims must be made aware

how backward they remain in the realms of science and knowledge. Nearly all

Muslim countries believe that their preoccupation with religion is of utmost

importance, they remain busy with building mosques and madrassas and

adhering to religious laws over and above modern jurisprudence. A healthy

literary environment, the need for advancements in the medical sciences, or the

work of physicists and the need for research facilities – none of these are

concerns. Rather most Muslims are preoccupied with using corruption to amass

as much wealth as possible. They believe that constructing one mosque or

undertaking one pilgrimage to Mecca is enough to absolve them of their sins,

thus paving the way to Paradise and leaving them with no responsibility to help

make the world a better place.

Who should the Bengali Muslim be proud of? If a Bengali wins a Nobel prize or

if a Muslim wins one? Among Bengali Muslims some consider their Bengali

identity as above everything else while others consider the Muslim identity as

paramount. If only we could consider the human identity as the most important

one then the work one is doing would justifiably become far more important

than one’s nationality, citizenship marker or faith. Identity in labour and not in

race or creed. Abhijit Bandyopadhyay is undoubtedly a talented economist. He

is a proponent of building a society premised on equality and doing away with

social inequalities. He is also a proponent of sterner taxes on the rich in order to

establish a welfare state. These are not new thoughts. After World War II many

European countries transformed into welfare states. Disgruntled and agitated

about having to pay too much tax, many rich and influential people are

threatening to emigrate from their own countries, relocating to countries with

low tax rates. This is one of the foremost side effects of globalisation. Profitable

business institutions have to be cajoled into doing business in a particular

country via the incentive of tax cuts. Perhaps Abhijit Bandyopadhyay has the

solution to these problems.

Human beings desire wealth and prosperity and there is no end to such desires.

The welfare state is premised upon taking from the ones who have more and

redistributing it among those who don’t. This was the reason behind the fall of

the Soviet Union – people had become dissatisfied that while they were working

hard and deserved the money, that money was being given to those who were

not working as hard as they. The same concern has been raised about the other

European welfare states as well. The US has always been capitalist, there the

drive has always been to benefit the affluent. So the rich are taxed as little as

possible. Across the world the popularity of right-wing capitalists is on the rise,

just as it is in India. And yet it is in India that two Nobel winning economists

have worked for the poor and not the rich, they have advocated the

establishment of an equal society. While there are many who do not believe in

social equality, it is still one of the most significant discoveries of human

civilisation – to live together in harmony and alleviate the burdens those who

are downtrodden. Is there anything more beautiful in the world than this

egalitarian principle? Nothing but benevolence, humanity, support and empathy

can trounce envy, greed and selfishness. Despite fine differences in opinions

among the members of the Nobel committee, in certain cases they are still

invested in celebrating this humanity.

In our subcontinent it is a choice few who hold the lion’s share of wealth and

privilege while most others struggle to make ends meet. It is the politicians who

determine the economy that the poor must endure. Millions of people want for

food, clothes and shelter. The poor will continue to suffer even if hundreds of

economists are there across the subcontinent, even if they keep winning one

Nobel after another. They will continue to suffer until politicians turn their

politics away from the rich and influential and focus on the poor and

disenfranchised sectors instead.