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are important here.

Perhaps I may be forgiven for commenting very briefly on a connection here-

through the importance of developing human capabilities which I have been trying to explore
over two decades now. The "capability approach" to understanding human progress focuses
on the expansion of human capability as the root of progress of individual and social living. I
have been writing on this for some time now. but the fuller implications of this approach are
5
presented in a newly published book. called Development as Freedom.

The social changes that occurred in China in the pre-reform period (expansion of

literacy. basic health care and land reform) enhance human capability to lead worthwhile and
less vulnerable lives. This is the case even without their role in the development of a market
economy. This was part of the commitment of the Chinese Communist Party as a part of its
political ideals. But these capabilities are also associated with improving the productivity and
employability of the persons and the possibility of people to interact with each other and with
the world.

China and India
The contrast between India and China is quite relevant in this context. India has. I

believe. some institutional advantages over China primarily related to its democratic system
and a relatively free press. I shall have more to say on these issues presently. It is, however,
important to note that while China has lost something substantial (in my understanding) from
the absence of a multi party democracy and a free press, it has gained enormously from the
political commitment of its leadership in two distinct respects.

First, in the post-reform period, with the economic policy changes of 1979 on-
wards, China has been able to make excellent use of international markets and economic
globalization, and also of the use of market based economic expansion within the economy.
To be sure, China has not attempted wholesale privatization of the kind that Russia tried in its
own reforms. and China has as a result avoided the problems created by the abolition of an
older system without a simultaneous development of new institutions and business behaviour.
But China has decisively and rapidly opened up its economy, curtailed the industrial dictatorship
of bureaucracy and the hold of misdirected controls. and is reaping the benefits of incentive-

related market dynamism. There are many other problems to be encountered still in China,
but the pragmatism of socialist thinking in China contrasts favourably with the inflexibility and
orthodoxy of the corresponding thinking in India. which is changing only very slowly.

~Amartya Sen. Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf. and Oxford : Oxford University Press. 1999). See
also my Commodities and Cap-abilities (Amsterdam: North-Holland. 1985 ; Delhi : Oxford University Press. 1998) ; On
Economic Ineguality (Cambridge. MA : Harvard University Press. and Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1992), and Gointly with Jean
Dreze. Hunger and Public Action (Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1989). and India: Economic Development and Social 0PR0rtu-
uily (Delhi and Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1995).