Should we be worrying on the Sen-Bhagwati exchange ..?

The Sen Bhagwati exchange is only exposing the strengths and weaknesses of each of the two great Economist from India, but sadly both settled in US.

While Sen is more of a development oriented man, Bhagwati is more of a growth oriented man. Until now I was under the impression that growth and development mean the same. I have to find what is the exact difference.

Sen, a Bharat Ratna, has tutored some great economists like Kaushik Basu from Columbia, but Bhagwati has great names as students like the Nobel Prize winning Paul Krugman.

Business Standard has this write up about these two great Professors and their exchanges. Prof Sen is keeping his cool, though.

Whoever becomes the PM next year, let us continue to be intellectually fed by these great Professors and we hope Prof Jagdish Bhagwati also gets a Nobel Prize very soon for his trade related and globalisation related economics work.

My question to both of them would be, what would favour the country is it growth (of trade) or development ( of the people) ? Is it not that both are equally important if India is to lead the world again in another twenty years ?

Or is it that one is more important than the other ? I would place development of the people (more humanised) to be ahead of trade (more material based) which anyway would happen if we have good development of the people.

george..