Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said the party which will come to power in West Bengal will also have to think about how they procure land for industrialisation since it was a major way of alleviating poverty.

Sen made the comment during a question-answer session with journalist Barkha Dutt following his Penguin Annual lecture, 2009, on Justice and India at Nandan. The lecture was arranged on the occasion of the release of Sen’s book The Idea of Justice in India.

“The way land was taken by this government was wrong... the party that comes to power next will also have to address the issue of alleviating poverty and they will have to keep in mind that by resorting only to agriculture poverty can hardly be removed. For that industrialisation will also have to be taken up... I believe there should not be any victory rallies but people should regroup and think of the way ahead,” Sen said.

Sen also said that in Singur, the Tatas should have purchased the land to build the small car factory.

As far as the withdrawal of support from the UPA government by the Left was concerned Sen said it was a policy mistake on the part of the Left.

“I believe the Indo-US Nuclear Deal was a minor issue. There were much bigger issues like people’s deprivation, gender inequality, lack of healthcare which should be addressed urgently,” the eminent economist said.

Earlier, while delivering his lecture, Sen rued the fact that there were more protests on issues like Singur and land acquisition than on larger issues like hunger, poverty, illiteracy, gender inequality, the problems that plagued the society. “To organise protests on land acquisition and all is easy....but there was not a murmur of protests over these bigger issues,” Sen said.