A Nobel for Development Studies

Re: Shafqat, Reply 16

I`m sorry, man. Can`t agree with you. Salman is not ``amongst the most highly regarded English writers currently alive``, as you admirely put it. This is your view. I`ve read his Midnight`s Children, Shame, and Satanic Verses. He is as deep as the bathroom tub, and not exactly a first-rate writer. In my view, no chance in hell for a Nobel.

Re: Godot.

I don`t know, yaar. Rushdie does have world-class talent, certainly the leading one of the desi writers writing in English, and amongst the most highly regarded English writers currently alive. He is the first desi English writer to be taken seriously; later writers of the same ilk have benefited from the windfall created by his breakthrough. An altogether new class of English fiction has been spawned. I understand your reaction: desis have every right to feel slighted at Rushdie`s biting caricatures of ourselves. Inevitably, our response to Rushdie is colored by our own desi complexes. Thankfully, however, the Nobel Committee is not so burdened. I think Salman Rushdie has a great gift which must be acknowledged, and I have little doubt that in time the Nobel Committee will do so.

saad

Beautifully put. Thanks.

Re: shafqat, Reply 11

Salman Rushdie a Nobel in Literature? You`ve got to be kidding me, man. When the hell freezes over! Salman is a stupid, ignorant, pompous ass. I am quiet sure the Nobel Committee knows that.

Shafqat,
Here is a cut `n`paste from another article.
regards
RanaRansher

Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1913 for penning Gitanjali.

Prof C V Raman won the Nobel prize for physics in 1930 for his study of the scattering of light, popularly known as the Raman Effect. The theory describes change in the frequency of light passing through a transparent medium.

Dr Hargobind Khorana was awarded the chemistry Nobel in 1968 for the interpretation of genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.

Mother Teresa, who became an Indian citizen in 1948, was awarded for peace in 1979.

Dr Subramanian Chandrasekhar, nephew of Prof C V Raman, was awarded for physics in 1983 for what is known as the Chandrasekhar`s Limit, which determines the minimum mass of a dying star enabling it to survive.

An eloquent, moving write-up. The atmosphere in 1950s Calcutta, on a small crowded table in a small cafe outside Presidency College ... and how forty years on much has changed ... Bimal Jalan heads the State Bank, Amartya Sen wins the Nobel Prize ...

In a word, awesome.

Folks, hlep me with this list of Nobel laureates of South Asian origin:

C.V. Raman - Physics
Abdus Salam - Physics
Rabindranath Tagore - Literature
Har Gobind Kohrana - Medicine
Chandrashekhar (?)
Others ?

(And one future Nobel Prize in the bag:
Salman Rushdie - Literature)

saad

PS: Dr. Ferid Murad, well known to medical students as an editor of Goodman & Gilman, the standard pharmacology text, is I believe of Persian ancestry.

Re: Safwan and Ashim

Thanks for the references. I could not get hold of the books, but did manage to read through a few of the references. A social scientist`s responsibility is in the understanding of phenomena that are currently (maybe even inherently) non-quantifiable. Therefore, I would tend to think that great economists are more akin to great philosophers than to great scientists. Of what I have read about Sen, I think he has, in the tradition of great philosophers, never allowed himself to forget the ethical dimensions of what he has studied and clarified, and in doing so, has not only presented an alternative view of looking at some economic problems, but has also pointed out the centrality of human issues in them.

I also wonder, if one can consider Sen to be a member of a ``humanistic`` school of economics, who are the other influential names there. I would appreciate the help of people in that, so I can fill this gap in my awareness. There are some names that leap to one`s mind, Bhagwati, Mahbub-ul-Haq??

Re: RanaRansher, Reply 7

I took Bhagwati`s class as a grad student at Columbia. He not only writes brilliantly, he is very witty and has a great sense of humor. He has done marvelous work in international trade aspect of economics. He s right! He should get the Nobel.

Wonderful. It is after a very long time that the Nobel for economics has been awarded to a learned social scientist. In recent years it has usually gone to those who work on the narrowly conceived discipline of economics, which is concerned mainly with abstract modelling, having almost no direct explanatory contribution to the understanding of the dominant issues of our time, such as mass poverty. For the dominant neo-liberal ideology, poverty need not even be a subject worthy of consideration. It is also appropriate that as the world financial crisis is making matters worse for the toiling multitudes of our planet, the Nobel has gone to someone who focuses on the solutions of real problems.

Hopefully, people who give importance to the Nobel

as something which makes a person worthy of being read, will now read Amartya Sen, and give attention to some of the interesting insights he has to offer. Sometime ago, he had drawn attention to the crucial role of the state in promoting social justice. He compared the social indicators regarding poverty for India`s richest stae, U.P., and Kerala, the poorest one. But effective land reforms, and education and health care policies of the provincial Governments in Kerala, had succeeded in eliminating mass poverty. U.P., on the other hand, ruled mostly by the Congress, remains mired in poverty.

Incidently, the Nobel for economics is not the real thing. The U.S. had it instituted in ``memory``

of Nobel to give prestige to the discipline. As Keynesianism was discarded, neo-liberal moneterists have mostly received it. For the Prize to go to someone like Sen, it can be safely assumed that the crisis of neo-liberal ideology is now recognised by some of the most pretigeous economists of the world.

tariq ahsan

Thank you for the excellent write-up on Professor Sen, Ashim. I share your hope that the Nobel will help popularize the work of the founder of the Gini. His ideas of social theory definitely merit formal applications. May be this will be the true `Third Way`. Meanwhile, what is Cambridge`s gain is a big loss for the Harvard community.

Anita

This is just an FYI for all those interested in the possible economic policy implications of this. Maybe this belongs on the forum, but....whatever. Apologies to those who`d rather not see this here.

regards
RanaRansher

Let us not confuse policy with academic brilliance, says Prof Bhagwati


Professor Jagdish Bhagwati said he was extremely pleased to hear about Amartya Sen winning the Nobel. ``It is richly deserved by Sen,`` said the Arthur Lehman professor of economics and politics, Columbia University, New York, USA, over the telephone.

Bhagwati is known to not share Sen`s views on matters of economic policy. When queried, he clarified, ``Sen has won the award for his academic work, and on which there should be no doubts. But on matters of policy, I do disagree with him.``

In fact, Bhagwati said it was the model of import substitution and subsidies, which the government of India chose to follow in the 1950s, that has kept India poor for all these decades. ``Let us not confuse policy with academic brilliance. The two are separate and different, and while I agree with one, I may not agree with the other.``

Bhagwati pointed out that he disagreed with the policy measure suggested by economist Milton Friedman, but his economic work was excellent. ``Bill Clinton does not have Nobel laureates to advise him, in fact he runs away from them,`` laughed Bhagwati, ``and I too would say the same.``

The Columbia University professor hoped that the Indian government would not use the Nobel win as an excuse to go slow on the reforms.
Asked if the economic crisis had a hand in Sen getting the Nobel, he discounted the idea. ``The Nobel committee decides as early as March.
Second, they sort of rotate the economics Nobel among the various streams of economics. So this was the time of welfare,`` he said, adding,
``When the time of international finance, it will be Robin Mandel, for econometrics it will be Edmund Phelp, and when it is the turn of international trade, I`ll get it!``

Bhagwati concluded by reiterating, ``The award is for Sen`s scientific analysis, and it should be seen as that. Do not confuse with policy.``

finally! he should have received it years ago.

A great source for information on Nobel Laureates is: http://nobelprizes.com/

From this site I am copying some information on Ferid Murad

FERID MURAD

1998 Nobel Laureate in Medicine

for his discovery concerning nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system.

Background
Born: September 4, 1936
Place of birth: Whiting, Indiana, U.S.A.
Residence: Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology, Pharmacology and Physiology, University of Texas Medical School at Houston, P.O. Box 20708, Houston, TX 77225, USA

http://www.india50.com/abni/aksI01.html
http://www.sintercom.org/polinfo/polessays/sen.html
http://www.vedamsbooks.com/no12421.htm
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/sen/papers.html

According to the news report he was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the topic of welfare economics had been acknowledged by the prize. I do not know about his work, could someone direct me to a reference which I can read?
thanks

The name of one of the three Nobel Prize winners in medicine is Farid Murad. Sounds suspiciously like a Muslim or a Pakistani name. The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal did not say anything about his origins. Does anybody know?