Confronting Amartya Sen's view: Why WHO's methodology on malnutrition is hopelessly flawed for India
Arvind Panagariya says well-nourished Indian children from within India also fail to achieve the WHO norms.
In a recent TV interview, when the anchor asked Amartya Sen how he would respond to economists Arvind Panagariya and Swaminathan Aiyar who had questioned the basis of his estimate of 1,000 deaths per week due to non-implementation of the food security Bill, he prefaced thus, "Panagariya I don't think actually believes there is much undernourishment in the country. He thinks this is a myth - at least this is the headline of his paper."
The remark bore no direct relationship to the question posed and was perhaps intended to discredit its source, namely, me. It reminded me of my only encounter with Sen in a TV debate on the food security Bill in which he disparaged me by saying that being resident in New York I wouldn't understand the ground reality of India. Ironically, it didn't dawn on him that he had spent an even larger proportion of his life abroad!