Letters

摘要

Sir - We read your review of "An Uncertain Glory", the latest book on India by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze ("Beyond bootstraps", June 29th). The review approvingly cites us as advocating faster growth through labour and land market reforms to cut poverty yet more deeply and to generate more revenues for social programmes. But your claim that Messrs Sen and Dreze wish to go "much further" leaves us puzzled. The truth of the matter is that Mr Sen has belatedly learned to give lip service to growth, which he has long excoriated as a fetish. He did not explicitly advocate any pro-growth policies, such as opening India to trade and to direct foreign investment, in practice before or after the 1991 reforms. Nor does he recognise that significant redistribution to the poor without growth is not a feasible policy.