Thaindian News

New Delhi, Nov 17 (IANS) India’s reaction to the last month’s Mumbai terror attacks shows the “maturity of our political system” and it “took world by surprise”, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said here Wednesday.“There’s lot of criticisms by many people that Prime Minister Manmohan (Singh)’s speech (after the Mumbai attack) was soft and missed the fire. But I think it was deliberate to ease out the tension,” he said.

Sen was speaking at the inaugural session of “Ideas India-2008”, a four-day summit organised by the US-based Aspen and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

He said the Mumbai attack was a “wake-up call” for the country, not only on security, but also on many issues.

According to Sen, the top three challenges India faces are hunger, illiteracy and poor public health.

He said the governments should give more focus on these issues.

Taking a dig at the Indian Left, the renowned economist said: “I was quite unhappy with the Left as they do not give priority to the issues like hunger that the classical Left would have done.”

“I don’t think anyone has lost his post because of the issue of hunger in elections. So it’s all about prioritising our political agenda,” Sen added.

Expressing concern about the changing trends in Indian politics, Sen said if leadership emerged out of interaction in earlier times, “today we see more of leadership emerging out of divisive politics and caste-based issues”.