ETHICAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS WITH ELAHI’S PAPER ‘FAD: SEN-BOWBRICK ENCOUNTER AND CONCEPTUAL COMPLEXITY’. A REPLY

Facts vs Semantics?

Abstract

Elahi’s paper ‘FAD: Sen-Bowbrick Encounter and Conceptual Complexity’ (Elahi, 2023) concluded that ‘the controversy concerning Sen’s FAD criticism seems more a semantic matter than an intellectual one’. Nothing could be further from the truth. My critique is confined to the causes of the Bengal famine of 1943. Amartya Sen’s explanation is that there was adequate food in Bengal in 1943, but for various reasons, including a wartime boom and inflation, some people ate so much more than normal that there was not enough food for the rest and there was a famine in which millions died. I presented a vast amount of evidence that there was a major fall in the supply of the main food, rice. A famine was allowed to happen because the major decision makers chose to believe, without any evidence or contrary to the evidence, or pretended that they believed, that there was adequate food in Bengal. I presented thirteen distinct, independent, refutations of Sen, and showed that he had systematically misstated his facts. The argument is on fact, not semantics. Sen, unable to challenge the facts or economic analysis, used diversion, obfuscation and abuse to draw attention away from them – what Elahi calls ‘semantics’.