Amartya Sen controversy over illegal house in Santiniketan

  • Mamata Banerjee on 25 December wrote to Nobel laureate Amartya Sen expressing support for him in a controversy over reports that he is on the Visva Bharati University's list of illegal plot holders.
WHAT HAPPENED?
  • Visva-Bharati University Vice-Chancellor Prof. Bidyut Chakrabarty, had claimed that he had received a call from Prof. Sen, who identified himself as “Bharat Ratna Amartya Sen” and requested that hawkers around his house not be evicted as his daughter, who visited Santiniketan often, would be inconvenienced.
  • Amartya Sen, however, denied having any such phone call.
  • On 24 December, VBU authorities wrote to the West Bengal government alleging that dozens of its plots have been recorded wrongly and that the list of unauthorised occupants includes eminent economist Amartya Sen.
  • The university alleged that Sen has reportedly occupied 13 decimals of land, in addition to the 125 decimals of legally leased land given to his father by the university.
  • Amartya Sen responded that the land on which his house is situated is entirely on a long-term lease, which is nowhere near its expiry.
AMARTYA SEN
  • Amartya Sen was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998.
  • He was awarded India's Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his work in welfare economics. 
  • The German Publishers and Booksellers Association awarded him the 2020 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for his pioneering scholarship addressing issues of global justice and combating social inequality in education and healthcare.
  • Sen, Nobel laureate and the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor at Harvard University, has been a vocal critic of some of the policies of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre.
  • Since VBU is a central university, this controversy is seen as an another fall-out of the rift between centre and West Bengal government
AMARTYA SEN’S LINK WITH SANTINIKETAN

  • Rabindranath Tagore had invited Kshitimohan Sen, the maternal grandfather of the economist, to Santiniketan in 1908 and he had played a key role in building the Visva-Bharati along with Tagore.
  • Visva-Bharati was set up in 1921.
  • In May 1951, Visva Bharati was declared a central university and an institution of national importance by an act of Parliament.


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