"We do like to speak," admits Amartya Sen, citing a well-known fact about Indians in the opening paragraph of "The Argumentative Indian." But what the Nobel Prize-winning economist goes on to demonstrate in this compilation of some of his best writings -- and this is less known today -- is that letting others speak is equally integral to the Indian temperament.
In choosing to examine contemporary India in the light of what Sen calls its long "argumentative tradition," India's most prominent "argumentative Indian" comes up with his own cogent interpretation of the current state of the subcontinent.
Is there something amiss about an economist writing on Indian culture's predilection to heterodoxy and dialogue? Not when that economist is Sen who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1998 for restoring "an ethical dimension to the discussion of vital economic problems." A self-described "social activist," Sen is best known for his work on poverty.