Arjun Kumar Sengupta
Encyclopedia
Arjun Kumar Sengupta (10 June 1937 – 26 September 2010) was a Member of the Parliament of India
, representing West Bengal
in the Rajya Sabha
from 2006 until his death. In addition to being a Parliamentarian, he was one of India's most noted economists, and led a multifaceted career as an academician and economic policy administrator.
in 1937. After finishing his schooling at Mitra Institution in Bhawanipur
, Kolkata, he graduated from the Presidency College, then affiliated with the University of Calcutta
. At Presidency College, he was a member of the All-India Students' Federation, a radical student organization affiliated with the Communist Party of India
, then undivided. He later took a doctorate in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), USA, at the age of 27. His career included eminent posts such as Special Secretary to the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi
(1981–1984), Executive Director and Special Adviser to the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
(1985–1990), India's Ambassador to the European Union
(1990–1993), Member Secretary of the Planning Commission (1993–1998), and Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha (2005 until his death). As an educator, he traversed many institutions, including Jawaharlal Nehru University
, Delhi School of Economics
, London School of Economics
and Harvard University
. Arjun Sengupta also served as the UN's Independent Expert on the Right to Development, the UN's Independent Expert on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty, and member of the United Nations Development Program's Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor
.
Dr. Sengupta died of prostate cancer
, which was first diagnosed in 2005. He is survived by his wife, Jayshree, and daughter, Madhura (Mitu), and brothers Arya and Pinaki.
, described Sengupta as having "a wide circle of admirers" and said that his "dedication, sense of public service and honesty serve as an inspiration to us all."
In conveying her sympathies, the President of India, Shrimati Pratibha Patil
, said that in Dr.
Sengupta’s passing away, “the nation had lost a well-known public figure.” In offering his condolences, the Prime Minister of India, Shri Manmohan Singh
, said that “in the passing away of Dr. Sengupta, with whom I had a very long association and friendship, the country has lost the services of an exceptional human being whose contributions in different spheres will long be remembered.” Shrimati Sonia Gandhi
, President of the Indian National Congress
Party and Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance
, described Dr. Sengupta’s “ability to explain ideas and issues in simple terms extremely valuable.” “I shall miss his counsel,” she said. Veteran politician and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha
, Shri Somnath Chatterjee
, praised Dr. Sengupta for his “great depth of knowledge, his achievements in different fields of our national life, his contribution as a world renowned economist, his concern for the poor and common people of this country.”
The United Nations Human Rights Council
observed a moment of silence for Dr. Sengupta on
September 27, 2010.
The Rajya Sabha
was adjourned on November 9, 2010, as a mark of respect to Dr. Arjun Sengupta.
Delivering the Arjun Sengupta Memorial Lecture organised by the Indian Society of Labour Economics on December 16, 2010, Professor Prabhat Patnaik
described Sengupta as an "iconoclast" and lauded the many roles he played "in his long and distinguished career."
. Later in the 1970s, he worked in Commerce Ministry under then Commerce Minister, Pranab Mukherjee. In his stint at the Prime Minister's Office in the early 1980s, Sengupta was reportedly unhappy about India's 1982 loan from the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), and wanted more to be done for agriculture and small farmers. At this time, he also steered two important groups: the Narsimham Committee, which created the architecture of disbanding quantitative controls and replacing them with tariff and fiscal steps, and also the Sengupta Committee on public sector reform. Sengupta was a proponent of the need for an arms-length relationship with the political authority in public sector units (PSUs). However, while Sengupta was a market reformer, his vision was different than what was in currency at the time in the international financial institutions. Yoginder Alagh, a former Union Minister and Sengupta's longtime colleague and friend, said that the reforms championed by Sengupta at the time "were our own, not big bang IMF/World Bank
reform initiatives."
Upon his return to India in 1993 (from the US, where he was with the IMF, and Brussels, where he was posted as India's Ambassador to the EC), Sengupta was appointed Member Secretary of the Planning Commission (India), under then Deputy Chairman, Pranab Mukherjee
. According to veteran journalist Rajesh Mahapatra, Mukherjee had become the rallying point for those in the Congress party that were critical of the market reform policies of then Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh. As Member Secretary of the Planning Commission, Sengupta brought together a group of left-wing economists to prepare a critical mid-term appraisal that highlighted the downside of economic liberalization. With this act, Mahapatra said, "Sengupta ended up on the wrong side of history. The finance ministry prevailed over Prime Minister Narasimha Rao to stop the mid-term appraisal from being printed in its original form." In the same article, Mahapatra alleges that Sengupta was subsequently denied many posts for which he was a candidate, including Governor of the Reserve Bank of India
, which went to Dr. Bimal Jalan in 1997, and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, which went to Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia
in 2004.
Another veteran journalist and TV personality, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, remembered Sengupta in a similar fashion. According to Guha Thakurta, Sengupta's critical stance towards "the neo-liberal school of economic thought subscribed to by Manmohan Singh" and refusal to "cultivate political godfathers" meant that he would be "one Finance Minister India never had." In a published tribute to Sengupta in The Asian Age, his daughter, Mitu Sengupta, described him as "a strong, principled and self-made man, a visionary and true egalitarian," and someone "who could be neither bullied nor bought."
(NCEUS), a cabinet-rank position that he held from 2005-2009. This report, released in April 2009, revealed that, despite many years of economic growth, 77 percent of India's population continues to live on less than Rs. 20 per day, and that as much as 86 percent of India's workforce is in the unorganized sector. The report also revealed that the vast majority of India's 'Poor and Vulnerable' are Muslim or lower caste, and thus in addition to poverty
, also suffer from social discrimination. According to the report: "These groups emerge as a sort of a coalition of socially discriminated, educationally deprived and economically destitute" while "less than one fourth" of India's population is enjoying the fruits of high economic growth. Under Sengupta's Chairmanship, the NCEUS produced a total of ten reports in addition to submitting a number of proposals and working papers on selected issues, such as the global economic crisis, the informal economy, Special Economic Zones, and street vendors.
Critical of existing government policy, the NCEUS pointed out that although enormous funds had been allocated and spent on social development programs, the benefits largely bypassed the poorest of the poor. It suggested designing special schemes for the vulnerable sections of Indian society through better targeting and social engineering. The commission's recommendations on social security resulted in the enactment of the Unorganized Workers Social Security Act, 2008. Recalling Dr. Sengupta's contribution to identifying the cross-linkages between extreme poverty and the downtrodden, C. Rangarajan
, Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, said: "He had a good understanding of social problems and was deeply involved in finding solutions for people at the bottom of the population pile." Another of Sengupta's admirers, the Vice-President of India, Mohammad Hamid Ansari
, said that the “Sengupta report on the unorganised sector is a guiding force to provide minimum social security for all unorganised workers.”
. He produced six reports on the Right to development
between 1999 and 2004. These reports elaborated on the 'Declaration of the Right to Development' adopted by the UN in 1986 (the US cast the lone dissenting vote). He also wrote a number of academic papers on the subject, and with the support of Harvard University, implemented two large projects in South Asia. In his subsequent role as the UN's Independent Expert on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty, he wrote as many as six reports, including a mission report on extreme poverty in the United States. Sengupta founded the Centre for Development and Human Rights (CDHR), a non-profit organization that has produced numerous papers, reports and volumes on the rights-based approach to development, including an edited volume, Reflections on the Right to Development, produced in 2005.
According to Ravi Srivastava, Professor of Economics and Jawaharlal Nehru University
, "Sengupta's contributions to the right to development constitute... a very significant contribution to the ongoing debate in India on the rights-based approach." Srivastava says that Sengupta's reports provide a "formidable basis" for arguing that positive rights and collective rights are possible. Sengupta argued that the enforceability of collective rights via the implementation of development programs was possible even without their being converted into legal rights (though he recognized that justiciability did remain a superior course of action).
The right to development was linked to a path of development in which national governments were obliged to ensure that human rights
were progressively realized. But international organizations were also seen as having an important role. In a seminal article published in India's Economic and Political Weekly
in 2001, Sengupta argued that: "When development is seen as a human right, it obligates the authorities, both nationally and internationally, to fulfill their duties in delivering (or in human rights language, promoting, securing, and protecting) that right in a country. The adoption of appropriate policies follows from that obligation. Nationally, the government must do everything, or must be seen as doing everything to fulfill the claims of a human right. If the right to food, education, health are regarded as components of a human right to development, the state has to accept the primary responsibility of delivering the right either on its own or in collaboration with others. It has to adopt the appropriate policies and provide for the required resources to facilitate such delivery because meeting the obligation of human rights would have a primary claim on all the resources - physical, financial and institutional - that it can command."
Parliament of India
The Parliament of India is the supreme legislative body in India. Founded in 1919, the Parliament alone possesses legislative supremacy and thereby ultimate power over all political bodies in India. The Parliament of India comprises the President and the two Houses, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha...
, representing West Bengal
West Bengal
West Bengal is a state in the eastern region of India and is the nation's fourth-most populous. It is also the seventh-most populous sub-national entity in the world, with over 91 million inhabitants. A major agricultural producer, West Bengal is the sixth-largest contributor to India's GDP...
in the Rajya Sabha
Rajya Sabha
The Rajya Sabha or Council of States is the upper house of the Parliament of India. Rajya means "state," and Sabha means "assembly hall" in Sanskrit. Membership is limited to 250 members, 12 of whom are chosen by the President of India for their expertise in specific fields of art, literature,...
from 2006 until his death. In addition to being a Parliamentarian, he was one of India's most noted economists, and led a multifaceted career as an academician and economic policy administrator.
Life and career
Arjun Sengupta was born in KolkataKolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
in 1937. After finishing his schooling at Mitra Institution in Bhawanipur
Bhawanipur
Bhawanipur may refer to:* Bhawanipur, Janakpur, Nepal* Bhawanipur, Parsa, Nepal* Bhawanipur, Sagarmatha, Nepal* Bhawanipur, Bihar, India* Bhawanipur, Barpeta, Assam, India...
, Kolkata, he graduated from the Presidency College, then affiliated with the University of Calcutta
University of Calcutta
The University of Calcutta is a public university located in the city of Kolkata , India, founded on 24 January 1857...
. At Presidency College, he was a member of the All-India Students' Federation, a radical student organization affiliated with the Communist Party of India
Communist Party of India
The Communist Party of India is a national political party in India. In the Indian communist movement, there are different views on exactly when the Indian communist party was founded. The date maintained as the foundation day by CPI is 26 December 1925...
, then undivided. He later took a doctorate in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
(MIT), USA, at the age of 27. His career included eminent posts such as Special Secretary to the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...
(1981–1984), Executive Director and Special Adviser to the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
(1985–1990), India's Ambassador to the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
(1990–1993), Member Secretary of the Planning Commission (1993–1998), and Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha (2005 until his death). As an educator, he traversed many institutions, including Jawaharlal Nehru University
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Jawaharlal Nehru University, also known as JNU, is located in New Delhi, the capital of India. It is mainly a research oriented postgraduate University with approximately 5,500 students and a faculty strength of around 550.-History:...
, Delhi School of Economics
Delhi School of Economics
Delhi School of Economics , commonly referred to as DSE or D School, is a centre of post graduate learning of the University of Delhi. The centre is situated in the university's North Campus in Maurice Nagar, and is surrounded by a host of other prestigious academic institutions of the country...
, London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
and Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. Arjun Sengupta also served as the UN's Independent Expert on the Right to Development, the UN's Independent Expert on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty, and member of the United Nations Development Program's Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor
Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor
The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor was an independent international organization, hosted by the United Nations Development Programme , and established in 2005 as the “first global initiative to focus on the link between exclusion, poverty, and the law.” Drawing upon three years of...
.
Dr. Sengupta died of prostate cancer
Prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. Most prostate cancers are slow growing; however, there are cases of aggressive prostate cancers. The cancer cells may metastasize from the prostate to other parts of the body, particularly...
, which was first diagnosed in 2005. He is survived by his wife, Jayshree, and daughter, Madhura (Mitu), and brothers Arya and Pinaki.
In memoriam
In condoling Sengupta's death, the Vice President of India, Shri Mohammad Hamid AnsariMohammad Hamid Ansari
Mohammad Hamid Ansari ) is the 12th and current Vice President of India. He is a former chairman of the National Commission for Minorities...
, described Sengupta as having "a wide circle of admirers" and said that his "dedication, sense of public service and honesty serve as an inspiration to us all."
In conveying her sympathies, the President of India, Shrimati Pratibha Patil
Pratibha Patil
Pratibha Devisingh Patil is the 12th President of the Republic of India and first woman to hold the office. She was sworn in as President of India on 25 July 2007, succeeding Dr. A.P.J...
, said that in Dr.
Sengupta’s passing away, “the nation had lost a well-known public figure.” In offering his condolences, the Prime Minister of India, Shri Manmohan Singh
Manmohan Singh
Manmohan Singh is the 13th and current Prime Minister of India. He is the only Prime Minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to return to power after completing a full five-year term. A Sikh, he is the first non-Hindu to occupy the office. Singh is also the 7th Prime Minister belonging to the Indian...
, said that “in the passing away of Dr. Sengupta, with whom I had a very long association and friendship, the country has lost the services of an exceptional human being whose contributions in different spheres will long be remembered.” Shrimati Sonia Gandhi
Sonia Gandhi
Sonia Gandhi is an Italian-born Indian politician and the President of the Indian National Congress, one of the major political parties of India. She is the widow of former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi...
, President of the Indian National Congress
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian...
Party and Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance
United Progressive Alliance
The United Progressive Alliance is a ruling coalition of center-left political parties heading the government of India. The coalition is led by the Indian National Congress , which is currently the single largest political party in the Lok Sabha...
, described Dr. Sengupta’s “ability to explain ideas and issues in simple terms extremely valuable.” “I shall miss his counsel,” she said. Veteran politician and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha
Lok Sabha
The Lok Sabha or House of the People is the lower house of the Parliament of India. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by direct election under universal adult suffrage. As of 2009, there have been fifteen Lok Sabhas elected by the people of India...
, Shri Somnath Chatterjee
Somnath Chatterjee
Somnath Chatterjee is an Indian politician who had been associated with the Communist Party of India for most of his life, though he is currently an independent...
, praised Dr. Sengupta for his “great depth of knowledge, his achievements in different fields of our national life, his contribution as a world renowned economist, his concern for the poor and common people of this country.”
The United Nations Human Rights Council
United Nations Human Rights Council
The United Nations Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations System. The UNHRC is the successor to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights , and is a subsidiary body of the United Nations General Assembly...
observed a moment of silence for Dr. Sengupta on
September 27, 2010.
The Rajya Sabha
Rajya Sabha
The Rajya Sabha or Council of States is the upper house of the Parliament of India. Rajya means "state," and Sabha means "assembly hall" in Sanskrit. Membership is limited to 250 members, 12 of whom are chosen by the President of India for their expertise in specific fields of art, literature,...
was adjourned on November 9, 2010, as a mark of respect to Dr. Arjun Sengupta.
Delivering the Arjun Sengupta Memorial Lecture organised by the Indian Society of Labour Economics on December 16, 2010, Professor Prabhat Patnaik
Prabhat Patnaik
Prabhat Patnaik is an Indian Marxist economist and political commentator, who has achieved international acclaim with his incisive analysis of economics and politics. He was teaching at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University in...
described Sengupta as an "iconoclast" and lauded the many roles he played "in his long and distinguished career."
Government and politics
Arjun Sengupta joined the Government of India in the early 1970s, assisting top policymakers such as P.N. Dhar and Sukhomoy Chakravarty build an alliance with the nascent state of BangladeshBangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
. Later in the 1970s, he worked in Commerce Ministry under then Commerce Minister, Pranab Mukherjee. In his stint at the Prime Minister's Office in the early 1980s, Sengupta was reportedly unhappy about India's 1982 loan from the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
(IMF), and wanted more to be done for agriculture and small farmers. At this time, he also steered two important groups: the Narsimham Committee, which created the architecture of disbanding quantitative controls and replacing them with tariff and fiscal steps, and also the Sengupta Committee on public sector reform. Sengupta was a proponent of the need for an arms-length relationship with the political authority in public sector units (PSUs). However, while Sengupta was a market reformer, his vision was different than what was in currency at the time in the international financial institutions. Yoginder Alagh, a former Union Minister and Sengupta's longtime colleague and friend, said that the reforms championed by Sengupta at the time "were our own, not big bang IMF/World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
reform initiatives."
Upon his return to India in 1993 (from the US, where he was with the IMF, and Brussels, where he was posted as India's Ambassador to the EC), Sengupta was appointed Member Secretary of the Planning Commission (India), under then Deputy Chairman, Pranab Mukherjee
Pranab Mukherjee
Pranab Kumar Mukherjee is the current Finance Minister of India and leader of the current Lok Sabha.Mukherjee is a senior member of the Cabinet Committees on Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Parliamentary Affairs, Political Affairs, Prices, Security, Unique Identification Authority of India,...
. According to veteran journalist Rajesh Mahapatra, Mukherjee had become the rallying point for those in the Congress party that were critical of the market reform policies of then Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh. As Member Secretary of the Planning Commission, Sengupta brought together a group of left-wing economists to prepare a critical mid-term appraisal that highlighted the downside of economic liberalization. With this act, Mahapatra said, "Sengupta ended up on the wrong side of history. The finance ministry prevailed over Prime Minister Narasimha Rao to stop the mid-term appraisal from being printed in its original form." In the same article, Mahapatra alleges that Sengupta was subsequently denied many posts for which he was a candidate, including Governor of the Reserve Bank of India
Reserve Bank of India
The Reserve Bank of India is the central banking institution of India and controls the monetary policy of the rupee as well as US$300.21 billion of currency reserves. The institution was established on 1 April 1935 during the British Raj in accordance with the provisions of the Reserve Bank of...
, which went to Dr. Bimal Jalan in 1997, and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, which went to Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia
Montek Singh Ahluwalia
Montek Singh Ahluwalia is an Indian economist and civil servant. He is currently the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of the Republic of India. He was previously the first Director of the Independent Evaluation Office at the International Monetary Fund.-Early life and education:Montek...
in 2004.
Another veteran journalist and TV personality, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, remembered Sengupta in a similar fashion. According to Guha Thakurta, Sengupta's critical stance towards "the neo-liberal school of economic thought subscribed to by Manmohan Singh" and refusal to "cultivate political godfathers" meant that he would be "one Finance Minister India never had." In a published tribute to Sengupta in The Asian Age, his daughter, Mitu Sengupta, described him as "a strong, principled and self-made man, a visionary and true egalitarian," and someone "who could be neither bullied nor bought."
Work as Chairman of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector
Upon his death, various published tributes to Dr. Arjun Sengupta indicated that his most significant contribution was the final report he produced as the head of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized SectorNCEUS
The National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector is a national body commissioned by the Indian government to address the issues faced by enterprises in relation to the informal employment sector-Background:...
(NCEUS), a cabinet-rank position that he held from 2005-2009. This report, released in April 2009, revealed that, despite many years of economic growth, 77 percent of India's population continues to live on less than Rs. 20 per day, and that as much as 86 percent of India's workforce is in the unorganized sector. The report also revealed that the vast majority of India's 'Poor and Vulnerable' are Muslim or lower caste, and thus in addition to poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
, also suffer from social discrimination. According to the report: "These groups emerge as a sort of a coalition of socially discriminated, educationally deprived and economically destitute" while "less than one fourth" of India's population is enjoying the fruits of high economic growth. Under Sengupta's Chairmanship, the NCEUS produced a total of ten reports in addition to submitting a number of proposals and working papers on selected issues, such as the global economic crisis, the informal economy, Special Economic Zones, and street vendors.
Critical of existing government policy, the NCEUS pointed out that although enormous funds had been allocated and spent on social development programs, the benefits largely bypassed the poorest of the poor. It suggested designing special schemes for the vulnerable sections of Indian society through better targeting and social engineering. The commission's recommendations on social security resulted in the enactment of the Unorganized Workers Social Security Act, 2008. Recalling Dr. Sengupta's contribution to identifying the cross-linkages between extreme poverty and the downtrodden, C. Rangarajan
C. Rangarajan
C. Rangarajan is an Indian economist and a distinguished former Member of Parliament and Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council...
, Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, said: "He had a good understanding of social problems and was deeply involved in finding solutions for people at the bottom of the population pile." Another of Sengupta's admirers, the Vice-President of India, Mohammad Hamid Ansari
Mohammad Hamid Ansari
Mohammad Hamid Ansari ) is the 12th and current Vice President of India. He is a former chairman of the National Commission for Minorities...
, said that the “Sengupta report on the unorganised sector is a guiding force to provide minimum social security for all unorganised workers.”
Work on the Rights-Based Approach to Development
In 1999, Arjun Sengupta became the Independent Expert on the Right to Development (RTD) for the United Nations Commission on Human RightsUnited Nations Commission on Human Rights
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights was a functional commission within the overall framework of the United Nations from 1946 until it was replaced by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2006...
. He produced six reports on the Right to development
Right to development
The right to development was first recognized in 1981 in Article 22 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights as a definitive individual and collective right...
between 1999 and 2004. These reports elaborated on the 'Declaration of the Right to Development' adopted by the UN in 1986 (the US cast the lone dissenting vote). He also wrote a number of academic papers on the subject, and with the support of Harvard University, implemented two large projects in South Asia. In his subsequent role as the UN's Independent Expert on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty, he wrote as many as six reports, including a mission report on extreme poverty in the United States. Sengupta founded the Centre for Development and Human Rights (CDHR), a non-profit organization that has produced numerous papers, reports and volumes on the rights-based approach to development, including an edited volume, Reflections on the Right to Development, produced in 2005.
According to Ravi Srivastava, Professor of Economics and Jawaharlal Nehru University
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Jawaharlal Nehru University, also known as JNU, is located in New Delhi, the capital of India. It is mainly a research oriented postgraduate University with approximately 5,500 students and a faculty strength of around 550.-History:...
, "Sengupta's contributions to the right to development constitute... a very significant contribution to the ongoing debate in India on the rights-based approach." Srivastava says that Sengupta's reports provide a "formidable basis" for arguing that positive rights and collective rights are possible. Sengupta argued that the enforceability of collective rights via the implementation of development programs was possible even without their being converted into legal rights (though he recognized that justiciability did remain a superior course of action).
The right to development was linked to a path of development in which national governments were obliged to ensure that human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
were progressively realized. But international organizations were also seen as having an important role. In a seminal article published in India's Economic and Political Weekly
Economic and Political Weekly
The Economic and Political Weekly is a left-leaning Indian magazine published from Mumbai by the Sameeksha Trust, a charitable trust. The magazine was first published in 1949 as the Economic Weekly and since 1966 was re-christened the Economic and Political Weekly. It was edited by Krishna Raj...
in 2001, Sengupta argued that: "When development is seen as a human right, it obligates the authorities, both nationally and internationally, to fulfill their duties in delivering (or in human rights language, promoting, securing, and protecting) that right in a country. The adoption of appropriate policies follows from that obligation. Nationally, the government must do everything, or must be seen as doing everything to fulfill the claims of a human right. If the right to food, education, health are regarded as components of a human right to development, the state has to accept the primary responsibility of delivering the right either on its own or in collaboration with others. It has to adopt the appropriate policies and provide for the required resources to facilitate such delivery because meeting the obligation of human rights would have a primary claim on all the resources - physical, financial and institutional - that it can command."