 Amartya, thank you very much. Thank you. I said earlier on that I was hoping that the Philomela core music would linger on in our minds. I mean, I can certainly say the same about Amartya's wise and insightful wider annual lecture. Now, we have here some 600 people and there are, of course, many from Finland, but I would like to make the point that they're joined by people from more than 75 countries across the world who've been attending the wider 30th anniversary conference over the past three days. I've been saying three decades so many times. Now, I'm sure that we're going to have many questions from a wide range of perspectives in this questions and answers session. Now, dear audience, can I please ask you to introduce yourself before you ask your question and can I please ask you to be brief? We do want to fit in as many of you as possible in this conversation, in this question and answer section. And I don't want to resort to the trick that we sometimes use, namely that the sound goes off. It would be better if we can be brief and concise, but I do realize that sometimes that's not enough. I would also be very keen to hear questions from the younger members of the audience. I said in my opening remarks to the 30th anniversary conference a couple of days ago that it is critically important for our profession to engage with the bigger questions in development. Now, this is particularly so for the younger generation. So I will give priority accordingly, depending on the flow of the conversation. And President Adesari, please do let me know if at some point you wish to make an intervention. Now, it's a little bit hard to be here and see so many people, so what I'm suggesting that I do is that I sit and can see more or less in the middle and now I will start here in this side and then we will move around clockwise. And I will suggest that we take to begin three questions and then we get the conversation going. And I should say that we have allocated almost an hour and 20 minutes for the conversation, so there will be time to get around the room and hopefully have a good and insightful conversation about some of the wider problems in the world but also maybe some of the wider solutions and insights. So can I invite comments from this side? OK, start here. Hello, my name is Aang from Vietnam. I'm doing my PhD and I've been reading Professor Sen since the first day of my economic study. And I have a question for Professor Sen. Is that in your book is identity and violence? You have mentioned about the importance of culture and the question is not does culture matter but is how culture matters and I want to ask you and whether you could give more explanation on the role of culture in sustainable development, not in terms of environmental issues but also in terms of social issues especially in how education would change our perception about our identity in a global Asian world and advice to the young economists like me because I'm really interested in culture and I want to know your opinion. There was somebody just behind yes, a lady there with the glasses I can see at least. Thank you, I'm Yenne Galpula from the United Nations Association of Finland and I'm really pleased to have heard this wonderful lecture and I would like to ask your opinion since you mentioned the need for new research agenda and you mentioned sustainable development goals sort of you mentioned sustainable development and now we have new sustainable development goals coming and I was thinking that could there be like a moral issue like oil drilling in the Arctic for example that would be sort of a research agenda issue as well it has been in the NGO campaigns but how does it show in the research field thank you. Okay and then here Jim Davies I'm from the University of Western Ontario in Canada Professor Sen in your book on economic inequality which I think came out in 1976 you put a dedication I believe to your children and you said that you dedicated it to them in the hope that however they decided to measure inequality in the future there would be less of it we seem to have seen some hopeful signs that on a global level at least there is less inequality I'd be very interested in hearing your comments about that trend and how hopeful you think it is this was the first three I think a match that you know my memory my memory may be a little better than my metal knees let me go in reverse order I'm delighted you mentioned that there was a 73 book on economic inequality which is a dedicated thing no matter how you measure it there would be less I think it's partly it's expressed what I wanted to think about the future of the world since I do regard inequality to be a major issue and have thought that throughout my life but partly also the book also also deals with the fact that particular criteria may differ and when the particular measures of inequality may differ but quite often what you are talking about is not sensitive to which measure you are using that's why I'm saying no matter how they decide to measure it there would be less of it and so the intersection partial ordering to talk of it in mathematical terms is a big thing in the book of which the Lorenz dominance is the oldest kind so I'm delighted you mentioned that because that comes up in every way and today there is in some ways you could say that inequalities have expanded in other ways it's gone down quite a lot of it going down is due to China in fact sometimes India is included in it and some extent that's too but the biggest contribution is China but in per capita income terms in China's case there's also been much more inequality reduction in because of basic school education being widely shared and basic healthcare which actually for a while after 79 economic reform they did not they actually abolished health insurance provided by the state and the communes and they cover itself from 100% to 12% between 79 and 80 but they have recovered ground so these things have actually tended now to move together accepting I would say that since I do regard human rights and democratic rights to be important that there are some issues to be addressed there particularly in the context of political context in election multi-party election big thing if it's a part of inequality that you're looking at then that's not so there isn't an intersection I mean the intersection of generate the different measures don't go always in the same direction but quite a few do in case of India I think the along with the inequality issue and it's not so much that inequality has dramatically increased but I think the persistence of the inequality between people with opportunity of good schools and not having those with not that instrumental strong if you hear Indians are producing lots of good people and that's true they're running Microsoft, they're running Google and until recently Deutsche Bank and so on and at the same time the huge number of people don't even get the most basic elementary education that kind of inequality so it's not just the income inequality and in this case no matter how they measure it hasn't happened and even the achievement of poverty reduction and income has not been quite matched with poverty reduction in terms of education healthcare and it doesn't depend only on public government policy it you require a and this is the question about culture at the beginning you require politics a culture a politics in a national sense whereby these issues remain important and people pay adequate importance to that which hasn't happened but India having a democracy hasn't happened and I'm very pleased I've been kindly quoted from my New York review please saying that democracy in itself doesn't guarantee it it's an opportunity we have to use it so I think inequality in the kind of form in which we talked about in wider 30 years ago where capabilities began playing a bigger and bigger part of what we're doing then at least in my thinking remains very big so I'm very pleased about that and I think the scorecard is uneven on this across the world now on the subject of the the quality of the moral question the moral quality important I'm one of those old fashioned people who happen to believe in the fact in what I think is understanding that a lot of our moral failures come from inadequate appreciation of the facts of the case there's a puzzling remark that Wittgenstein the great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein made I think in a letter in 1918 or so to someone from Edelman if I remember right saying I sometimes wish I was a better person that is more intelligent so I raised my eyebrows what could Wittgenstein be meaning more intelligent has nothing to do with being morally better I think the point he was making is that a lot of our moral failures come from not understanding the totality of what is involved it's like the children find it quite often easy to kill insects in a kind of torturous way by putting salt on it or something and we find it perfectly fine to enjoy our lobster when it's reddened and although there's a great deal of pain going on there and the claim was that if you fully understand, if you better understand what's happening you would actually act differently so I think quite a lot of the moral issues involved and end-year of course play a very big part in my judgment it's a very central part of democracy because democracy is not just election it's also about getting issues ways discussed and standing up against other problems for example if the Greenpeace gets into difficulty in India today on ground that somebody wanted to make a point and he was not allowed to go with their end-year of fighting for a moral quality that the country needs and so end-year of play the part but I never took the view that a lot of economists don't worry about it because they're not concerned with people their morality does not include how their lives go I think most people who are on the other side and who are often arguing with me and attacking me too take a view of what happens in the market economy which is very far from the reality and also take a view that somehow for example you could raise your income now and then do your education and health care I think that is an epistemic problem I don't think it's primarily an ethical problem and I think a lot of the moral concerns that the questioner was raising not only comes from the kind of public engagement in which NGOs may be involved but also from better appreciation and fuller understanding of the nature of economic development and that's one of the reasons I keep quoting I don't say it again and again because it's a sad fact that some of the things clear to snitch in 1776 not to mention earlier 1759 now 250 years later don't seem to be clear to people today the first question from the gentleman from Vietnam again a very interesting question about the role of culture and we spent a lot of time in wider and early days and I think there's one way of thinking about culture which is that culture is important another way of thinking of culture is culture is a part of life and what is important is the richness of life in which culture could play a big part or a negative part when it plays a part of giving people the opportunity of advancing their thinking then it's playing a very positive part education is part of culture when however it deals with some cultural tradition being continued or like say gender inequality treating women as in some ways less deserving than men well that's culture too that's all the way we have to go as far as genital mutilation to understand that there is a culture of problems involved in that and yet culture is a changeable feature there was a study dealing with the practice of foot binding in China and it's interesting that there was a time when it became clear that a lot of the individual family members did not want their daughter to undergo foot binding but that was such a dominant culture that was very difficult for any individual to stand outside it this research I've forgotten his name he's now University of California in San Diego I'm terrible at that you know one of the oddities is that I see some mathematical economics that never seem to forget the proof but every name is gone some day when I say who was it from the wealth of nation in 1776 you can take the liberty of informing me and telling me that he was Adam Smith so anyway so this is the guy who did the research on that and what happened in fact is a very interesting history of how it ended some people decided that they will not allow their daughter to foot bound alone irrespective of others and as that number showed 15-20% by the time it came to 35-40 there was an avalanche and within two or three years it became 100% so I think it teaches and that's a culture of feature too namely we live in a society we depend on each other and we depend on each other's approval and disapproval that's a very important thing this is a very important context that you were referring to identity and violence I think and I do talk about that a bit and so thanks for that reference it depends on what part of culture you remember terrorism is a very big thing in the world today even in the nuclear context it came up but terrorism generally is a very big issue and I was very privileged to serve along with Sadako Ogata as co-chair of the Human Security the UN commission for Human Security and it's it includes both of course poverty which is insecurity and hunger and famine but also the terrorism and violence and yet quite a lot of it is culturally related not in the sense that some people as as Sam Huntington thought are culturally thrown to a certain type of violent approach but it's a question of focus what you read and take the fact that the biggest news at the moment maybe I'll give two example Islamic terrorism ISIL well it depends on whether you take what is to be a part of the culture about the violence and forceful conversion and so on and many countries have had that India has had big attacks at some stage including temple being destroyed and so on and yet it's also the case that we use the word algorithm today remembering 9th century Arab Muslim Christian Al-Kharazmi from whose name the term comes from whose book Al-Jabba Mokabila comes the term Al-Jabba half the world of mathematics at that time still be related to India and Arab get huge credit to Indians in fact and came from the Arabs and the big book begins always with praying to Allah and so on that doesn't prevent you from doing the highest level of maths now what is the Islamic heritage do you think of the killing of the infidel or doing the highest quality maths these are the people who preserved Aristotle and Plato when Europe destroyed it and they had to be re-translated from Arabs I'll give you an example some of the cultural contrast think of the word sign in trigonometry sign you remember that trigonometric notion where does it come from the first use of it was by one of the pioneering trigonometry in India called Ayyabhat and I feel personally linked because when the Nobel museum wanted two objects of mine I gave them a copy of Ayyabhat's original book not original copy but a reference from 401AD and also I gave them my bicycle on which I carried data on gender inequality and boys and girls and also some food things so there's a bicycle and there's Ayyabhat so Ayyabhat called it the sign after explaining the concept called it Gia Alter Gia is a diameter, Gia Alter is a radius and if you remember your trigonometry you could see why it's called that he abbreviated it and often called it Gia when the Arabs translated it they translated it as Giba now Giba has no meaning in Arabic but Arabic like Hebrew doesn't have any vowels it's consulant written and vowels you could imagine like Kabeer and Akbar are basically the same name K-B-R so the later generation of Arab mathematician and Ayyabhat was translated four times Brahmagupta was translated six times into Arabic because they were very interested in studying it and developing it and threading it so the later generation called it not Giba but Gaeb Gaeb is a good Arabic word meaning a Bayeric code now when 1150 Gerardo of Cremona in Italy translated into Latin the word Gaeb in in his book on mathematics he translated the cave of Bayer or Gaeb which is the Latin word for a Bayer and a cave code and that's where the word sign comes from so in one word sign you see three different cultures the Latin based European culture the Arabic mathematical culture the Indian mathematical culture and mathematical culture in Sanskrit happening put together so it's that totality that we have to look at when we are looking that wider view if I may use the word wider of culture is what we have to look at in order to understand culture and not the narrow view with which I associate the class of civilizations so thank you for your question okay I think we will take the lady over here thank you I'm from the University of Copenhagen and I have one question regarding the issue that you already addressed namely terrorism so I read on the UNI wider website your text I couldn't hear the word so my question is on terrorism terrorism, okay my favorite subject exactly so I read on the UNI wider website your text on this annual lecture and you highlighted the issue of terrorism and conflict as a challenge for development economics research for the next three decades so could you please give some advice to young researchers and young economists on how to approach this issue in the research and I would be interested in hearing your comments especially regarding data collection and the issue of scarcity of data on this area thank you very much can we go all the way to the back I love the way Shin has a spatial equity I'm Prakash Singh from Amherst College how can public services in health and education be made more efficient in developing countries in particular how can market mechanisms such as the role of performance incentives for healthcare workers and school teachers be implemented to improve efficiency thank you there was a gentleman to the very far end almost towards the wall my name is Petri Mink and I'm an independent scholar here based here in Helsinki Finland and if I understood correctly you have been written also about migratory issues so my question would be now because we have during recent months there's been a growing concern here in Europe and also here in Finland about the recent growth of migration or immigration to Europe so my question would be from the point of view of development and development economics what Europe should do now in relation to this issue and the other question because you probably can see some to the future as we all to a certain extent also from the point of view of development and development economics what, how do you see the prospects of migration let's say from Africa and from the Middle East to Europe let's say during next 15 years okay thank you I seem to hear a very young voice I just want to say that that's an absolutely definite sure priority so if there's a very young voice that comes in then I can guarantee you access a matcha I think let me begin with the hardest question namely what should Europe do I think it should do several things and when I say several things it should do it does not mean that that will solve the problem that's not the right way of thinking about anything I have a book called the idea of justice and among the gambles I have on what is basically a Hobbesian approach to justice thinking in terms of ideal justice is that that's not the way we proceed I mean we it's always worth thinking about that but you need a theory of justice which also can while recognizing it at the one end also talks about what steps could be taken right now it's that duality we need now it applies here too in some ways central to that recognition is whether how strong is our human identity no I'm not talking here about border control I'm not talking about anything just how strong is our human identity now ultimately I think human identity being more important than it seems to be in national thinking is a dramatically important thing to cultivate the it's not the case people don't have it otherwise somebody asked the question about NGOs it's amazing how much people are ready to sacrifice for the sake of their human identity I was very privileged for three years to serve as president of Oxfam before it became a kind of much more of a complex international structure when things were about to simple many years ago and I was very trapped by the fact how people were risking lives when we did lose lives at different places in the world to go to serve causes of people they have not only never met they barely knew but they knew about the suffering and the fact that they could make a difference so that is in some ways the kind of thing that human identity can produce and if you think about the nature of global history to think of it in terms of you know we have generated it ourselves and nobody else that actually does not really explain why some countries have so much richer today than than they were in the past in that phase part of engineering or science or political organization in which it will take a lot of European genius and the work has played big part but it has also not only based on that it also has borrowed the Chinese science and used Indian and Arab mathematics of which I give an example Gerardo of Kemal now when he was translating Arab work he was contributing to the Renaissance and indirectly to the industrial revolution so we have to think about that interdependent world and human identity to be able to place the problem in its proper perspective and some people whom I greatly admire like people who take such huge risk to service in NGOs I mean some of the NGOs are really hard NGOs to work in because of the dangers and the hardship involved they already may recognize certain thing that a much bigger recognition of that is really quite important along with that comes the division between say religious I grew up at a time of religious turmoil Bengal where I come from has had very little communal violence in the past and no communal party had won an election in Bengal until 1946 it's always been secular parties Bengal is a Muslim majority area they are Muslim chief ministers but they were not for secular parties things did go wrong and then again Bangladesh have been able to construct a situation where it very had huge features of secularism the dominant culture is a secular politically secular personally religious most people it came remarkably at me when somebody asked me to be a patron of a function in Dhaka called Bengali International and they were very worried about Islamist and very worried about secularism being under threat and they came to me and I arranged lunch for them and of course these secularism none of them is lunch because this happened to be in the Ramadan period so the interesting thing is that there is of course no conflict in your personal religious belief and still being totally committed to secularism and you see that in Bangladesh often because it's 92% Muslim and many functions in fact standard functions with the Prime Minister you will hear a 90 seconds 3 minutes of Quran followed by 3 minutes of Bhagavad Gita 3 minutes of Bible and 3 minutes of the Buddhist tipitaka now for 8% of the population to get 3 quarters of the time is a lot of secularism indeed and I think it is possible to construct it because Bangladesh was lucky it had a great leader in the form of Sheikh Mojib Rahman and who could actually make that as a way of seeing yourself so then so happened that in the history of Bengal 46 was the first victory of the communal party but by 54 Bengalis had a different Bangladesh had a different identity they are playing with namely the identity of being a Bengali and the Pascha-Undole language movement became a dominant factor now that in some context could be also a divisive one different in the context Europe fought the First World War with the division between Germans and British and the French was massively important religion was not and yet now people would think of that division to be almost nothing whereas the division between being Christian and Muslim was enormous there was a time when a man called Gautam Putta who established Buddhism was going around why and his disciple like Ashoka while on one side you should argue for their perspective but on the other side tolerate everyone and yet in Burma officially you have found the same Buddhists people belonging to Buddhist monasteries being in the forefront of killing Muslims in Burma so I think it really depends on how important we make this our human identity to be and recognize the multiplicity of identity it allows us also to fight one identity battle with another like Bangladesh used the language against the division between Hindus and Muslims and similarly you can think of it in many other context so I think this is the way to look at and coming back to the European question that would be also ultimately the solution to the problem and I'll say two things and I didn't say the second thing but I wanted to get this point through I think right now it is a question I think in Germany with which I was German policy I was somewhat critical was critical of the Finnish policy too on the subject of austerity and I don't think that was and ultimately it was not a very intelligent policy in fact any policy that in order to cure Greek problem reduces the economy by nearly 30% cannot be must have to have a different economic theory in their mind something has gone deeply wrong in that thinking but then the Germans have actually even though they have changed talk that now about enormously more than any other country dead in this respect and really lived up to some of the leadership role that you might play I think the solution now will have to be of this kind understanding where the tensions are the main tensions are coming right now from Africa and they are now the main tensions are coming from terrorism hit Middle East and that's why terrorism is such an important thing today to stop it I think most of the refugees are coming from places like Syria and so on and I think so the question the whole world has interest in cultivating global peace Europe has too because of its refugee problem but also because of its refugee problem so there are many things that Europe can do right now to make the problem a little easier and reduce injustice in the world rather than going for ideal justice but if we are inspired by ideal justice the idea of human identity has to play a very major part in that I'm sorry that was a long answer thank you did I see so we will take one more here the lady sitting and then I'll move over to the back half of this side Riham Rez from Egypt assistant professor at the British University in Egypt my question belongs to the MENA region in Egypt where? in Cairo okay so my question is I want to know your opinion about what's going on on the MENA region as we all know that as a result of the uprising we do have a lot of instability in the region not only with can you hold it okay my question is regarding belonging to the MENA region we all know that we are facing instability we're not only you're not only going to the security issues and the conflicts but also the economic problems becomes worse after the uprising we have for example high rate of unemployment among the graduates inequality rate and blah blah blah I'd like to know what do you think about the development strategy that should be followed by these countries in order to recover from what they are facing and actually I would like to know also in addition to achieving democracy and its principles and following as a start for achieving development it could be the initial step that should be followed by these countries or as they call the government authorities in these countries they are calling that we are going to achieve economic growth and after that we will make it inclusive thank you okay so okay this gentleman at the very far end and then the lady just above my name is George University of Ghana and professor Sena I like your work on the rational he's over here oh okay yeah maybe I'm too dark sorry University of Ghana yes I like your work on the rational fools what I want to know are two issues one is how far has the rational fool changed since 1997 and how with the advent of the networked world how are they how is the networking influencing behavior and development into the future and again I would want to know those rational fools how well do they influence policy with the advent of social movements that are carrying various parts of the world and what are the implications for development especially poverty and inequality in Africa thank you okay the lady just behind but up a bit thank you my name is Tru Shadwin I am from Sida the Swedish here send Sida or Swedish Sida Swedish Sida my name is Tru Shadwin I think we are all grateful to you from our perspective on poverty to a multi-dimensional perspective on poverty so we all now talk about poverty as resources but also as power choice opportunities and related to that security but then when we assess and measure the developments of poverty over a period of time we kind of struggle in keeping that multi-dimensional perspective and we fall kind of back into monetary measurements of poverty what is your advice to us in improving the way that we assess and measure poverty so that we keep all the dimensions also when we look at the developments over a period of time thank you okay thank you please go ahead Amartya I was just trying to signal to the left hand side over here that I will come back yeah actually let me follow the questions in the actually I'm going to leave the questions from Ghana to the last because I want to say something about Alex Coopong in that context so I begin I begin with the questions from the ladies from Egypt I think this is a very important question I certainly happen to think that democracy and development are not only important in themselves but also democracy is a part of development that one has to recognize development is not only not just increase in GDP is not only is it just expansion of human quality of life or life expectancy but also a society in which human beings are free to express their view to work for their view to try to persuade others so public dialogue is very important public reasoning is very important and I think that's very central to development both because it enriches human life and also because that's the way we can get policies corrected like if we are going to change the kind of single focus anti-global warming but not worry about nuclear danger we have to get that into the dialogue so democracy is very central for that now you pointed out and you are absolutely right to do that lots of people are tempted to say why don't we have first economic growth and then we will do democracy I think there are many problems with that first is that it's not clear that not having democracy will necessarily have economic growth when people say we don't like democracy they are opting for a basket in which you may be China or you may be North Korea or Somalia or somewhere and there are real problems and they are dealing with North Koreans very fine human beings and not any different from South Koreans and yet why is the country in the mess and why is there no development so I think it depends and if you look at even China China had the worst largest famine in recorded history in which when I originally wrote about it also in New York Review suggesting 17 million debt I was told that it's impossible people couldn't have got away with that but by the time by the time I published a more research paper on that the estimate then was 30 million now the Chinese government themselves talk about 42 million and this happened in China which in many ways was progressing much faster than in India, it didn't happen in India that doesn't mean that there's nothing to learn everything is negated by the Chinese famine another way of looking at it the lower mortality in China compared with India really means that every six or seven years more Indians died than died in the Chinese famine so you have to take these lessons rather than saying which one we do China had a big problem in 79 as I already mentioned when suddenly one morning abolished state universal health insurance and one stroke by a Canada type system to a US type system of health care and that wasn't an improvement it wasn't an improvement in Chinese condition it's not an improvement in US condition and I think there were many other things you can similarly point out so could China have achieved the same rate of growth if they abolished democracy no reason whatsoever people used to say that about India also that India because of having democracy India didn't have any growth but when India was growing at seven and a half eight percent a year it was still a democracy so much so that the government we generated it lost office shortly after there couldn't be a bigger test of democracy than that so I think I think that contradiction is an imagined contradiction it doesn't exist it's similarly like the identity the fact that you may have a strong universal human identity doesn't take away the pride that you might have in your Finnish identity the fact that you can enjoy the music that we had you can enjoy the wonderful experiences that Finnish society produces nor do you have to have live in a place without a sauna I discovered that my place the room I was in in my hotel may or may not count as five star in every state but it does have two saunas within my premise I've never had a sauna but since I thought I might suffocate myself in heat and not be able to come and I haven't yet tried it so I think we have to we still have contradictions exist when none do so I'm delighted you raised a question now see the question that was raised I think here I want to do say something measurement is a much easier thing than people tend to make it now I wear many hats and I get bored with the subject I teach so I vary this year I'm teaching a course in mathematical economics and a course in in the medical and public health school two years ago I taught a course in postgraduate mathematics along with a mathematical colleague of mine Barry Mesa and because that used to be a lot of my interest very early in my life now one of the problem is measurement and the way we learn mathematics at that time there was a great book called no human being called Burbaki a French author but not an author really a cluster of people who wrote under the name of Burbaki and the way to the original topology or set theory it begins where is measurement measurement begins with ranking now rankings are not necessarily complete you might be able to say look I think I think everything can say that I was so far to live in I don't know in one country or another live in Britain rather than in another country which is much poor but that doesn't mean you should be necessarily be able to compare living in Britain as well to France as well to Finland as well to the USA you may not be able to say that answer that doesn't reduce the fact that it's a ranking it's a partial ranking what Burbaki called preordering when you have a preordering and when it becomes complete then you get a complete ordering when that complete ordering has certain structure you can attach numbers to it not not all orderings are numerically representable when you have some more structure those numbers have certain characteristics so if you double one you have to double the other it becomes like weights and heights and there are various intermediate degrees which we also in that class went through but the beginning of it is ranking partial ranking now when somebody says for example that we need to pay more attention to culture yes but it's not quantifiable and therefore any quantitative thing would leave that out why is it not quantifiable what's the what's the problem why do we need to pay attention to culture does that make the society worse off yes well there you got a partial ordering going anyway you just said that society which pays no attention to culture is worse than a society which does pay attention to culture that's the beginning of your partial ordering so many of these measures has to be done in terms of the degree of measurement that would be appropriate to the variable and very old fashioned not only do I quote Adam Smith in 1776 but I even quote Aristotle who said in politics in one of his books about politics every subject, each subject has to have that degree of precision and exactness in its measurement and expression as the variable as the variable of that subject demand and I think many of the things that we have to measure they are not going to come out in quantitative numbers they will come out as rankings of various kind and there's an enormous opportunity of doing that and that's not I mean people say it's not quantification that's absurd of course because if you if something is better than another you know that the other cannot be given a higher number than the first there's a numerical restriction already there I even actually wrote a paper many years ago on exactly that subject of the called representation of partial order so I think we have to think about the substance ultimately it's going to be a conversation and the conversation has to be about content the content maybe for some cases like literacy maybe some numbers would be usable that's what millennium development goals did but the millennium declaration which claimed millennium development before millennium development had other objectives too had things about democracy and human rights and democracy you may not be able to attach a number but you might be able to say that just as I said that North Korea is from a democratic point of view is not only worse than Japan but also worse than China now that is already a statement you're making so I think when the second round comes we have to place much more to real material for debate conversation and argument rather than quantification and arguments are about sentences they are not numbers you say something the argument don't go like saying 136 no 129 but I wanted 142 I think that would be an insane conversation so conversations use numbers but they also use rankings so that's the direction in which I would go now I have to go to Ghana so Alex you come from the University of Ghana I promised to go to the University of Ghana for 6 months when Alex visited Delhi when I first met him and he was a great talker and he talked me into agreeing to go to Ghana for 6 months but then of course he himself quit and went off to UNU and then I couldn't go to Ghana because no one renewed that offer I'm not offering to go again now at the age of 81 but that time would have been a good time but he was not only a good talker Alex was there when I I didn't came he had a huge reputation and this is interesting since he is so important for wider early days he had a real reputation as a classicist which was his subject and very often when we would discuss things about masque versus Helsinki bits of Greek and Latin would flow into our conversation he was also a great dancer he had a huge reputation for excellent ballroom dancing he was a few years ahead of me but one occasion I actually I could never dance but someone was trying to teach me and who claimed that he had danced with Alex Quachon the greatest dancer but he failed in a project in my case but after that he didn't give a diagnosis he said you know you'd never be able to dance very well because you are too hesitant you're trying to figure out you have to lead that's what Alex Quachon did and you would never be able to be a success in life because you don't know how to lead now I think of it often actually I think very nostalgically about Alex Quachon leading us but the big thing that I learned from him was of course and I'm taking this opportunity of the Ghanaian question to talk about that and it does relate to the question about you know you said about rationality and rational fools and so on about taking the multi-dimensional aspect of rationality when I asked him what did you learn I mean you from Ghana and you were spending your time doing Greek and Latin and it would be like me I had a lot of point I'm doing Sanskrit but I have to ask always the question what do I benefit from that and he said he got a perspective which he couldn't have got without that classical education it's the vet now when people complain about rational fools it's not rationality I was complaining about and I was a little shocked to see and my friend Joe Stiglitz must have been a great rush that the messages that I put on the board Joe is put again through rationality and economics now I don't think he is he is against rational fools and economics he wants rationality he wants like all of you do want to have reasoning argument do the right thing and the rational fool characteristic is a guy who cannot tell different between questions which have already come up in this discussion that it is in my interest it is a better thing to do this would be the right thing to do I will do it I will vote for it these are completely different propositions only a rational fool could conceive that it's like saying as a finished gentleman finished person I cannot attach any importance to world identity human identity because I have a finished identity already that's a distinct identity but you could value them all that's the issue and I think I'm delighted that you like rational fools because that's one of the papers I spend a lot of time trying to convince the world about and I would need your help but also because it makes me think about some of the really nostalgic relations I was thinking of especially when I heard about it that recently about what I learned from what I learned from Alex Coffong's learning of Greek and Latin and the perspective that he did and I think the quotation from Aristotle which I gave he would have given it to of course in original Greek that is one of the many different ways in which we can learn from widening our education one of the objectives that Coffong had for wider right from the beginning I can't help add that the present chair of the wider board is the present vice chancellor of the University of Ghana and I can tell you that he both knows how to lead and to dance hahahaha so yeah here Mishi I'm Li Shi from Normal University, China China Beijing Normal University so Professor just mentioned the global income inequality has been declined largely due to the faster economic growth in China so that means my question is that when the China the move from lower middle income country to the middle income countries that really contributing to the equalizing impact on the global income inequality but we suppose the China continued having fast economic growth so nonetheless the GDP per capita in China is quite close to the world average so when the China continued faster growth that become high income growth yeah high income countries that will have decent equalizing impact on the global income inequality you see that is where this is a inequality in the world so my question is that if the country is so important for the change in the global income inequality the weather you see that make the measure you see measuring the global income inequality become less important I suppose a country from the low income country to middle income country decrease global inequality when it become high income country then decrease increasing inequality that is my question thank you there was a gentleman here is it on? Professor Shen Namoshkar my name is Seful Barua I work in Helsinki based consultancy in the area of forest environmental economics I proudly admit to you that the very reason I started to combine economics with my forest study is because of your work and you are winning the Nobel prize in economics in 1998 I have two issues that I would like to know your thought and opinion on the first thing is that in the past 10 to 20 years there have been a lot talked about and written about microcredit and its role in poverty reduction I wanted to know what is your thought on that I mean microcredit its role in poverty reduction social inequality and other thing you have touched upon already is the role of secularism or secular politics in promoting poverty reduction sustainable development and social justice thank you very much ok there is a lady here in the front thank you Professor Shen I of course I know who you are but you have to tell others ok this morning I came to breakfast and I saw Professor Shen sitting there so I went to him and I gave him a big hug because I wanted to thank him for all the things he gave us and he was very sweet thank you very much so I have two questions and I appreciate all your work but especially the part that does with gender equality and the role of women in development the first question is it is now becoming more and more than I'm sorry use your question ok it seems like all the nice things we do to push through development for humanity are great but if we look at for example the impact of education and health we now have people who live longer and that's a great thing especially if you are in rich countries and you are working and you have a nice retirement plan but if we look at poor countries now we have the children who are educated and the elderly and the elderly are left home without anybody taking care of them especially if they are really low income this is more true for women because on average women outlive men and so I was wondering if you think that there is two levels one is if we need an international effort to address this people ageing longer but especially women without anybody to contribute to their and second whether within state this should be taken on by what is becoming now more fashionable again the role of a developmental state and as you know in recent years we have been contributing the higher growth in many emerging countries to the active role of a developmental state is that something that we should be looking at also thank you ok yeah yeah these are actually excellent questions also so I'm beginning with the last I think the problem that about educated people leaving family and going about it's a big serious issue and it's something that has to be addressed in some way rather than shutting off education I think so that's the problem there and I always think that recognizing a problem is halfway to solving it and I think if that is the problem that's emerging then you have to see how you can it may have something with the content of education it may have to do something to do with the opportunities of job being more available in the rural area and some of the migration to our even international use something to do also with the rural areas being more enjoyable and liberal and so on and you know in some ways it's not that these are not absurd challenges these are all mutable factors they can be changed I think even compared with when I was a child and growing up in a village area I think the opportunities in India had major failures in many things schooling among them but certainly it always has richness in music but cinema becomes almost extensive it's not surprising that India makes more films than any other country in the world and there you go if you take the density of films cinema houses across it's pretty dense this is a topological concept namely you're arbitrarily close to a cinema anywhere and I think that it does make a difference but I think the job is the big thing and the job is the neglected thing in thinking in the world I think the job is the neglected thing in the European central bank policies it was the neglected thing in what emerged as the European commission policies it emerged also as the neglected thing about how to deal with Greece Greece is right now in a state where we don't quite know what the elections would produce but this is the only time in the history of the world when lenders have lent money to a country insisting on conditions which if followed would make it impossible for them to pay back that money what is needed here is not morality what is needed here is a bit of intelligence on that I think I'm sorry to have to say that intelligent thinking some of the some of the some of the biggest mistakes are made by very clever people and I think this is one of the so I think we have to rethink on on the job situation and how important it is how central it is to all the thinking that we have across the world we are very much raising that and I want to demand another breakfast maybe tomorrow the on the the question of Mr. Bower on the environmental no I think on the micro credit subject I think micro credit is undoubtedly one of the major benefits for in the world I think that one has to make a distinction between micro credit being very important and micro credit being a solution to a problem you can't solve all problems in the world with micro credit you can solve one problem namely that of getting credit and that is very important it doesn't solve education doesn't solve employment doesn't provide healthcare and so on and I know that there have been debates particularly in Bangladesh on that I think one has, and I think each side has tended to you know in some ways oversimplify the problem but I think the micro credit work that was done by Gramin Bank and of course, Brack had been doing that too I mean these in the context were doing important things whether the claims are made on favor of them was more than what could be justified that's a different kind of issue and we don't have to deal with that issue I think I have to go on because I think Fin can't tell me easily they keep your answer short but that's what he's intending to I know, I can see him so I so of course I would say very good to combine the world's oldest university in London started in 420 AD, which we are now reviving another chancellor of it until three months ago one of these schools we are trying to build up is the environmental school and that started already from last year and that being done in cooperation with the Yale University Forestry Department so there is a real reach there I wish we could talk more but we can't right now now on the China question that's really also very exciting I think the important thing is that China becoming a middle-income country is a celebration for everyone in the world not just for China because one of the things that is done and there the Nordic model comes in the they may have started schools and hospitals not thinking that this would help capitalism but there is no question that the market economy in China could not have expanded as fast as it did in the first reform period if it's not riding already on successes on education fairly widespread in sharp contrast with say India or South Asia generally so I think that was a very big achievement not just raising the quality of life but making the market economy possible it's the thing that Japan first started in 1868 with the major restoration then South Korea Taiwan and then all of China combining a market economy along with not just market economy the state too for that as I quoted Smith having made clear but that combination worked very well that combination does not mean that the Chinese are going to necessarily feel themselves detached from the rest of the world even if they become high-income countries China was one of the greatest achievers in the world when it did a lot of things printing the first printed book in the world had an international feature which comes in on the human identity I could have given an example like in the sign there what was the first printed book it was a Chinese translation of an Indian Sanskrit book it was a diamond sutra which in Sanskrit but it was said that it was a paramita sutra I read it in school I should mention not in Chinese but it was translated six times first time in 401 or 405 AD I think and it was published in 868 for the thread of it's a Buddhist book for the thread of universal enlightenment what did the first printed book in the world say in the dedication it said printed in reverend memory of my parents and for universal free distribution in the world that's very first printed book now I don't think China was thinking of itself it's only this is neither a Buddhist sectarianism nor a Chinese sectarianism the reference is not to China the reference is to the whole world and it's being printed in that so I think our ability to combine our global perspective our human identity along with success and with a great success in the world I mean there were little attempts in India which wasn't successful Korea, China, Japan very closely came they were all Buddhist engineers they were competing with each other Chinese won the battle narrowly but in none of those cases the objective of global education very far from their mind because they repeated again and again when I was studying in the history of printing I was stuck by the fact how global it was and of course it had a huge impact on expanding education in China itself and ultimately I think in what we are called the East Asia model and I think something like that so I'm sorry I will be cut off now so I would thank you for the question I know that there are lots of more questions but I have gotten very strong signals up from the back and even if I don't have some sort of snails sitting here giving me signals I've been told that it is about time but I think that President Artisari you have a question you need a mic it would be better if you had an observation yeah I know actually I thought that I would manage without this but I asked your permission to speak as an honorary citizen of Namibia I was inspired because of the question of gender equality because my wife and I are both honorary citizens of Namibia and I was involved with their independence and we attended now in March the 25th anniversary of Namibia and I want to tell you about the country what I found is that first of all there is a free primary education in the country they are now going to make the secondary education free that's what I call trying to run the version of equality in the country they have also decided that half of the post members of parliament have to be women they are still short perhaps two or three I'm not surprised that the president that retired Lukas Bohamba got the Mou Ibrahim annual prize which will be given to him in November 20 I think in 2022 we are going to be in Accra where he will receive the prize but I wanted to mention this because I said to the new president Hage Gengob that I will invite him to Finland to come and give few lectures here during his stay and try to explain to Finns how to actually implement gender equality in Finland he said to me that Marty don't be in a hurry with your invitation because first of all I have to get economic growth going better and fight the poverty in my country I just want to mention this and I will invite everyone to look for Mou Ibrahim good governance report that comes out basically every autumn where all the countries in Africa it varies from around 52 recently has been covered and they have been put into our order in that Namibia has been six among the 52 now for many years but I want to give a sort of good example that there are good examples and look at the Mou Ibrahim report because it gives the first class what is happening in Africa thank you Finland was asking me what should I say in response it's very easy actually and it's even sometimes somebody wants to say something and the question is how can you make it into a question now a question in this case do you agree I'm very easy to answer namely yes and I take this opportunity of saying how much I have for my period when I was here and of course we also have to know his wife and his son who worked on capability a long time ago and I always value that connection very much and I'm particularly touched that it's not necessary that you are here today and very grateful could I suggest that we give a hand too on that note can I ask my four colleagues to join Professor Sen am I supposed to do something no absolutely I mean if you wish to hug indeed that sounds like a very good idea ok thank you so hug ok so I can stand here I guess I wish to express our deepest appreciation to Professor Sen for being our guest in Helsinki this has been a truly wonderful way of celebrating 30 years of wider achievement now you will also note that four wider research fellows have joined Professor Sen they include Dr. Carla Canales from Ecuador Dr. Nadia Vidago from Burkina Faso Dr. Smerdi Sharma from India Dr. Surab Singhal from India I and Widers A Whole want to signal as strongly as we can the importance of the younger generation driving the next decades of much needed research for action in development in the spirit of Professor Sen Professor Sen you wrote the very first wider working paper on food, economic and economics and entitlements published as wider working paper number one in February 1986 now this was followed by now more than 5,000 wider publications over 30 years including the best ever selling volume on hunger and public action authored together with Chandraes which I have right here next to me Amataya is a small token of our deep appreciation we've kept for you not a book from thousands of years ago but the very last copy of the original print run of working paper one Nadia Nadia can I ask you to present on behalf of Widers first working paper to Professor Sen and I hasten to add we do have reprints of the working paper for everybody in the audience to take before to leaving tonight it's at the exit as you go out Professor Sen can I ask you to join the front row okay thank you thank you at the very beginning of this afternoon I promised that the PhiloMailet choir would return so can I ask you to remain in your seats and enjoy the music to widen your lecture in your mind after which you're all invited to the reception outside thank you very much Professor Sen