An Interview with Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati
By Mosarrap H. Khan
In this Cafe Dissensus conversation, Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati speaks to Mosarrap H. Khan. He is the University Professor of Law and Economics at Columbia University and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A renowned expert on international trade, he has served in top-level advisory positions for the World Trade Organization and the United Nations, including Economic Policy Adviser to the Director-General, GATT (1991-93), and Special Adviser to the UN on globalization. His most recent book is: Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries (2013), co-authored with Prof. Arvind Panagariya, which was picked as a ‘best book’ of 2013 by the Financial Times.
In this interview, Prof. Bhagwati talks about his differences of opinion with Prof. Amartya Sen, Indian General Elections 2014, economic growth, economic reforms, Gujarat Riots 2002, social spending, and foreign investment in the retail sector.
Interviewer:
Mosarrap H. Khan is a doctoral candidate in the Dept. of English, New York University. He researches in the area of Muslim everyday life in South Asia. He is an Editor of Cafe Dissensus.
Café Dissensus 
very nice piece that’s well researched, I too have qtsnuioeed the merits of global capitalism and on balance have found it to be wanting and now strongly advocate protectionism. I am a member of the squeezed generation that has seen all of the values we were brought up with cast aside and squandered on the alter of growth’ and liberalization of economics. No one in government seems to care about the human cost of these polices in this country or abroad, their lack of empathy borders on the psychotic. I personally feel that an economy should be sustainable and should serve all of its citizens equally. It’s clear today that the economies of most western nations including ours in the UK completely fail at this. Globalisation of money sends jobs abroad and depresses living conditions and wages at home, whilst simultaneously opening up developing countries for exploitation and economic slavery, putting them in a position which discourages the development of a decent regulatory framework that western countries developed and policed effectively (until recently) and in doing so made themselves great. If you try to do that today though they call it protectionism and claim that it will somehow harm the economy when in actual fact it only hurts the people who are presently exploiting the status quo. I became aware of this blog after watching the Keiser report, I think I’ll come back and visit more regularly.
Thank you for your comments!