SOCIAL SCIENTIST. new political economy which believes in privatising health and education, in hitting at organised labour and in generalised economic deflation for tackling all external payments problems, and therefore is directly antithetical to increased state intervention for food and health for the masses—this uncomfortable fact is not dealt with by him. Despite all our reservations about the way Professor Sen has theorised many of these problems, and its distance from a Marxist analysis of imperialism, we have to bear in mind that the very fact that he has stormed the theoretical centres of the imperialist countries, and has repeatedly and consistently over the last two decades emphasised the primacy for development economics, of ensuring the well-being of the masses through public action to make affordable food, health and education available—this very fact has caused his name to be anathema to reactionary forces. The Wall Street Journal recently carried a bitter attack on the award of the Nobel to Professor Sen, as indeed have the right-wing commentators in this country who are politically allied to the BJP. For the Left movement, Professor Sen is an ally, with or without the Nobel; and it should welcome the fact that there is belated recognition of the importance of the issues of social justice with which he has concerned himself for so long. UTSA PATNAIK