Owning Amartya-da

The Nobel Prize is a pampered institution. Nobel laureates more so. So when Amartya Sen won this year´s "Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences", the tom-tomming of his achievement hardly came as a surprise. But what was exasperating was the way those who had nothing remotely to do with Sen fell over one another to own his legacy. If Indians were more than proud that one of "us" had attained the "ultimate" award, the Bengali Indians went absolutely wild over "our" Amartya Da. Not to be outdone, the Bangladeshis went about reminding everyone that the "amiable" Amartya Sen had spent his first 12 years on their soil. As for the politically inclined, both the right and the left found ample proof in Sen´s works that he was one of them. Amartya euphoria stretched to ridiculous levels. A Calcutta caterer cashed in by declaring: "We´re proud to have served food at his daughter´s wedding." A Bangladeshi participant on an Internet discussion group revealed pearls of information about the house Sen had lived in during his Dhaka days: "The present owner of the house is Mr Amanullah…The original structural design of the house has not been altered much except for receiving a few coat of paints." Then there were the new-born babies who now will have to live up to their "Amartya" moniker (hopefully without the marital disasters of the thrice-married economist). Deification was also part of the mania. In Calcutta, India´s Nobel cradle, puja pandals were erected in the name of Sen, with the protagonist looking more dishevelled than ever.

The Indian and Bangladeshi media boasted to all who wanted to know that it was the father of all Indian Nobel laureates, Rabindranath Tagore, who had christened Amartya. The most cloying compliment came from the prominent Indian weekly, Outlook, which called him a "prophet". Another Indian weekly, Sunday, was not too far behind in the superlative game, unabashedly trumpeting that "the world´s greatest economist is an Indian".