accountable
The British colonial authorities didn't intervene in the market because, like the Chinese communists, they weren't accountable to the public.
The Sen way of seeing the world can be applied to natural disasters. The Disaster Emergency Committee has got its priorities right because if aid for the victims of the tsunami is stolen in democratic India, there will be a public scandal. If it is stolen by the military in dictatorial Burma, no one will dare point an accusatory finger.
Sen's conclusion that famines were caused by the absence of political freedom wasn't a wide-eyed endorsement of democracy.
Hunger, corruption and misery can flourish in democratic countries as well as under colonial and indigenous tyrannies. He merely pointed out that democracies have to act in moments of crisis, and, he might have added, not only democracies in the poor world.
The British government is being judged on how it responds to the South Asian catastrophe. It had better do well, because Tony Blair is planning to use his commitment to reducing poverty in Africa in the UK's upcoming election campaign to woo back the liberal middle classes who were furious about the Iraq war.
Whether this novel appeal to the electorate's better instincts will work is open to doubt, but it will be heartening to see them try.
Just as people who made a donation toward the disaster fund are better than those who did not, so governments that expect to be held to account are better than governments which use all the power of the state to ensure that they are not.
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