New Delhi: Globally acclaimed economist Jagdish Bhagwati on Friday said demonetisation will promote growth while Amartya Sen and other experts who denounced it stand “humiliated and exposed”.
“On the effects of demonetisation on growth, I should say that I was the one economist who had argued (with my co-authors), from first principles, that demonetisation would increase, not diminish, growth,” he said. “And that is exactly what appears to have happened”.
“The prime minister’s success in Uttar Pradesh has, therefore, meant that Amartya Sen and his friends who argued that demonetisation would hurt growth, have been humiliated and exposed as much as the Congress,” Bhagwati told PTI in an email interview.
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He is a professor of Economics, Law, and International Relations at the Columbia University. “After BJP’s victory in Uttar Pradesh, indeed Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now in an even stronger position than when he was first elected resoundingly,” Bhagwati said.
He also said that three things ought to be noted that made (Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s) current position ‘unassailable’. “First, he has finally decimated the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, so the Congress is not merely on the ropes; they also lack currently anyone of stature who can rescue it from oblivion,” he said.
Second, the Muslim vote no longer is a monolithic anti-BJP vote, Bhagwati said, adding, “I suppose that while BJP did not field Muslim candidates in the Uttar Pradesh election, surely Muslims were aware that the propaganda that Prime Minister Modi was anti-Muslim was an outrageous lie.”
