Amartya still blowing smoke

mar 15th, 2009

if you don't have the patience to plough through all the classic turgid prose written by this poseur, just go to the end: he's stlll blowing smoke about kerala and his famous 'kerala model'. no, amartya sen rothschild, kerala's good health numbers have very little to do with state-provided health services. it has to do with:

a) water. there is plenty of rain in kerala, so the place is naturally hygenic

b) literacy. people can and do read about basic health matters and act upon them

c) large numbers of expensive private hospitals. they charge an arm and a leg, and kerala middle-class people have begun exploiting medical insurance so they don't care so much how much they pay -- they will get reimbursed

d) empowered women. kerala hindus were mostly matriarchal, so women always had economic clout. and christist females generally dominate their henpecked husbands. so women have traditionally spent money on their own and their childrens' health. therefore, quite naturally, health indices are better

e) a strong tradition of ayurveda. kerala is where hindu physicians kept the arts of ayurveda alive and closest to the old traditions. besides the western ghats still has areas where there are medicinal plants.

all of these factors are the polar opposite of what this fellow implies -- that the state being in healthcare is the panacea.

there was also the delicious incident where sen rothschild was blowing smoke as usual about the chinese health-care system, and a chinese guy stood up and said he had spent years in the chinese health-care system, and it was nothing like what amartya claimed it. he more or less said amartya must be living on some other planet. it was reported that amartya's chin hit the floor, and the conference organizers had to hurriedly change the subject so that the fellow could recover from being exposed so rudely and thoroughly. this was posted on this blog at the time.

what a fraud the blighter is!


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rajan




http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22490


Note the reference to Kerala at the end of his piece.