Tax fertilizer, jewellery, fuel for revenue: Amartya Sen

Nobel laureate and Bharat Ratna, professor Amartya Sen is a votary of the Food Security Act. However, when asked whether he is proposing fiscal deficit to find the money for food security, the answer was "no".

"I am not recommending that. I think we have to cut fuel subsidy. We have to cut even fertiliser subsidy." So the key thing , he says, is more taxes and fewer subsidies on what he thinks is money going to people who already have it. "That money can provide for food security."   In terms of growth, he says, India is not the only one doing badly. It has dropped absolutely everywhere. For example, Sen said, Brazil, which competes closely with India and had a growth rate of 0.8% last year. If you take the whole year, it's more like 6.5%. That makes the gap between China and India much as same as it was before because Chinese (growth) has dropped too. So you have to put it on the context. There is a global slowdown and it is certainly part of the problem in India. But that's not an adequate answer, he said. "It is an important answer, but you have to look at other things. The second point I would say that there are need for growth stimulation policies."   "I don't think one could think about growth being on an autopilot -- you have to work for it and see what are the ways of: a) producing more incentives and b) providing the resources that are needed for economic growth. It is not just a question of Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) interest policy and so on. It is also question of the physical infrastructure, which is very underdeveloped in India and hurts in all kinds of ways. There is also the social infrastructure, particularly education. I am concerned primarily with its well being," he told CNBC-TV18.