Have you ever wondered why, 66 years after Independence, we still suffer from poverty and malnutrition and dengue and halitosis? Don’t worry, for we now know precisely who is responsible. It is none other than Amartya Sen, the Nobel Laureate in Economics.
Recall the people who died because of the potholes in Mumbai and Hyderabad? Sen is clearly to blame. He’s the one who wants more welfare programmes for the masses, leaving no money for infrastructure. Naturally, that has resulted in potholes and people falling into them. The logic, as you can see, is devastating.
Sen is also to blame for the exponential increase in corruption. Everyone knows that welfare programmes are riddled with graft. By insisting on expanding them, he is clearly encouraging corruption. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
Since we have no funds left over for streetlights, Sen is responsible for the rise in muggings, murders and rapes. His continuous spewing of hot air has led to global warming and the recent disaster in Uttarakhand. And I am fairly certain he once swiped my ham sandwich. There is, though, a silver lining — it was a shared antipathy to Sen’s latest book An Uncertain Glory that brought Salman and Shah Rukh together.
If you are of an academic bent of mind, I’d like to draw your erudite gaze to the evil man’s research in economics, in which there are definite clues about his depravity. For instance, one of his papers is titled ‘Arrow and the Impossibility Theorem’. Notice the negative attitude — you and I know that nothing is impossible and it is silly, in the modern world, to research arrows. A truly great economist would have written on ‘Missiles and the Possibility Theorem’. Note also this highly suspicious line in the paper: ‘If a set G of individuals is decisive (and if it has more than one individual), then some reduced part (a ‘proper subset’) of G is decisive as well’. G here obviously refers to the Gandhi family and the paper is a crass attempt at making them out to be decisive. He has also written a book called Choice of Techniques, probably a pornographic tract.
{{/usCountry}}If you are of an academic bent of mind, I’d like to draw your erudite gaze to the evil man’s research in economics, in which there are definite clues about his depravity. For instance, one of his papers is titled ‘Arrow and the Impossibility Theorem’. Notice the negative attitude — you and I know that nothing is impossible and it is silly, in the modern world, to research arrows. A truly great economist would have written on ‘Missiles and the Possibility Theorem’. Note also this highly suspicious line in the paper: ‘If a set G of individuals is decisive (and if it has more than one individual), then some reduced part (a ‘proper subset’) of G is decisive as well’. G here obviously refers to the Gandhi family and the paper is a crass attempt at making them out to be decisive. He has also written a book called Choice of Techniques, probably a pornographic tract.
{{/usCountry}}Indeed, the English language has long recognised Sen’s baleful influence. Why else does the word ‘coarsen’ have ‘sen’ in it? Did you know that Sen’s ridiculous attempts at inflating India’s malnutrition are the origin of the word ‘sensationalise’? Are you aware that Sen’s outdated views are behind the etymology of the word ‘senile’?
Significantly, Peru’s Maoist movement is known as Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) — the ‘Sen’ prefix gives the game away. People have been warning about the man for ages. Karl Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto, ‘A spectre is haunting India, the spectre of Amartya Sen’. Lewis Carroll understood the damage that Sen would do and prophesied, ‘Beware Amartya Sen, my son/The jaws that bite, the claws that catch/Beware the Jubjub bird and shun/The frumious Bandersnatch’.
I have one simple question: why does Sen wear his hair long? Could it be he has something to hide? Is it possible that he wants to hide his horns and the number 666 tattooed on his skull? Shave his head and all will be revealed.
And finally, it is a crying shame that the Sensex, that noble barometer of the country’s stock markets, should bear Sen’s name. I urge the Bombay Stock Exchange authorities to change it immediately. Bhagwatisex, or Bhagsex, would be so much better.
Manas Chakravarty is Consulting Editor, Mint
Views expressed by the author are personal