On politics and society

{ ROSHAN KISHORE } Data and Political Economy Editor

2021 was a productive year for reading. Two books have enhanced my knowledge and understanding of India’s intellectual traditions a great deal. The first is Amartya Sen’s memoir Home in the World. Sen is among the tallest living intellectuals today and the book gives us an opportunity to see how he became who he is. Two things stand out — the environment and the times Sen grew up. His interests are equally spread in the realms of economics and philosophy, something today’s model-churning economists would be scandalised about. The book is not just an account of the intellectual that Sen is; it is also an explanation of why there will perhaps be only one Amartya Sen.

2021 was also the year I rediscovered fiction, and even better, Hindi fiction. The vested interest should be declared upfront. I’m trying is to understand society and politics in the “Hindi belt” through literary writing. Among the 10 or so novels I’ve read so far, Asgar Wajahat’s Kaisi Aag Lagai (the first in a trilogy) stands out in its ability to capture contradictions in the complicated dialectics of “the personal is the political”. Set in AMU and the towns and villages of Uttar Pradesh, the novel is a fascinating account of politics and society across the broad spectrum of Left to Right in the 1960s. Among other things, it also tells you why our universities failed to produce intellectuals like Sen.