Nobel laureate Amartya Sen told India Today that the recent unrest in Kashmir has been grossly mishandled by the Indian government to the extent that the region reflects as the biggest blot on Indian democracy in the West.

"It is the biggest blot on Indian democracy. There's no question about that. There are a number of claimants to that position of being a blot. It is a case that figures a lot in foreign discussions. On my first night when I came here, a long CNN coverage on the brutality of policing and law and order was aired," said Sen, one of the world's greatest scholars, Nobel Prize winning economist, former master at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a Harvard University professor.

Kashmir mishandled for decades

"I don't deny that Kashmiris are meant to be Indians. The Kashmiris' attitude to rest of India has varied a lot. Basically, we have mishandled it for a number of decades. Right now, we are mishandling it very badly indeed," said Sen in an exclusive interview with Karan Thapar on his show To The Point.

"It is not a law and order problem. It is the people of Kashmir we are looking at. It is quite important to do the law and order right. The kind of horrific and violent treatment of protest and also banning newspapers will isolate Kashmiris. All these are penalising Kashmiris in a way is giving them absolutely no reason to feel close to India," he said.

Will it put off Western investors?

"I don't know and don't really care. But I do think that the lives and freedom of Kashmiris and the sense of pride and belonging of Indians to India is more important than whether Modi gets his investment or not," said Sen.

Sen also said that China spends about 3 per cent of their GDP on healthcare and India spends about 1 per cent, and it was no surprise that the Chinese get much better healthcare and much greater benefits from the high growth rate than India does. The real issue for the Modi government was not whether the growth rate is high, but what are the poor getting out of that, he said.

Raghuram Rajan's exit will damage economy

"There are three things we know about Raghu clearly. One, that he is a superb economist. Second, he was doing India a lot of good, both within the nation as well as internationally. Third, that he thought that powers that be, bigger powers than Subramanian Swamy, did not sufficiently detach themselves from that rather nasty criticism," said Sen.

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