The marketization of life will be a challenge for India: Michael Sandel

Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Can you justify torture in certain cases? How much is one human life worth? Are we letting markets inordinately dictate the way we live and behave? These are the kinds of questions that Michael Sandel raises, lifting his audiences above the quotidian. The soft-spoken Harvard professor of philosophy , who was recently in India, has captivated thousands, both in real life and via his online discourses. His latest book, ‘What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets’ addresses the alarming rate at which we have allowed commerce to rule our daily lives

Do you believe we live in a morally ambivalent society?

Money has always influenced power and privilege. But I do think that over the past three decades, the role of market thinking and values has become greater and greater. Money and markets dominate the whole of life, not just the domain of material goods, and that’s what I am concerned about.
We’ve drifted from having a market economy to becoming market societies — the difference is that a market economy is a valuable and effective tool that has brought about prosperity to countries all over the world. But a market society is a place where almost everything is up for sale. Market values invade almost every sphere of life — personal relations, families and community ties, health, education, civic life, law, politics. And that’s what I think we need to step back and debate.

Are you referring largely to the US or is this a worldwide phenomenon?

Many of the examples in the book are drawn from the US. The US is probably the place where these tendencies can be seen at their most extreme. But I think the same tendencies are at work around the world, maybe more so in developed economies than in developing countries, but I think the marketization of life will increasingly become a challenge for societies like India.

Is there a time and place in history where money and markets did not dominate values?

I don’t think there was a golden age when there was a perfect balance between deriving the benefits that markets can give while keeping markets in their proper place. But I think that during the second half of the 20th century, the development of the welfare state, and of regulations to protect the health and safety of workers, to protect the environment, to provide basic health and welfare of all citizens, more in western Europe, less in the US, did represent an attempt to moderate capitalism in a way that was consistent with respect for human dignity and social solidarity. But by the 1990s, and now in the 21st century, even those successful mixed economies have come under pressure of relentless privatization and marketization.
But I’m not simply talking about the erosion of the institutional protections given by the welfare state. What intrigues me, above all, is the way market thinking has entered into our ordinary self-understanding . So, when I was a kid and you went to an amusement park, everyone waited in lines, but today routinely, if you can pay extra you can jump the line. It’s a deeper issue.

You talk about the problems but can you suggest some solutions? Especially in a country like India which has been economically repressed for so long that market forces seem to be the only answer to upward mobility.