Supriya Lahiri: Last Lecture

 The following lecture was presented by Professor Supriya Lahiri on November 16, 2000, at a series entitled, “If This Were The Last Lecture I Would Give, What Would I Say?", organized by the Multi-faith Council of the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

I am honored to have been asked to speak in the last lecture series. Being an economist, I am very used to making assumptions. I have no problem in assuming that if this were my last lecture what I would say.

What is that I have learned from life that I would I like to share with you today? I have been thinking about this for the past few days and many different things have been crossing my mind. However, one thing that I did realize, in this process, is that my teachers had done a good job in training my mind to think as an economist.

The first thing we teach our students in the principles class is that Economics is about making choices. Given our unlimited wants and scarcity of resources – how do we make choices such that we maximize our utility or satisfaction? Economists often like to represent this satisfaction with the help of a “utility function”. The goal is to maximize utility given the constraints of limited resources. This utility function is essentially a relationship between a consumer's satisfaction or utility and the bundles of commodities that he or she uses. This utility function can be defined for an individual or for society as a whole. A mathematician would say that we are faced with a constrained optimization problem.

So I asked myself what choices did I make in life and what is my utility function? Have I been able to maximize my utility function, and what is the algorithm that I have used to maximize this function?

The important question is: what do I have in my utility function and who and what has helped me to specify my utility function? In other words what are the variables in my utility function – how did I choose them? In economics we say that there are two kinds of variables: exogenous and endogenous. Exogenous variables are those over which we have no control; they are determined outside the system and economists take their values as given-- as opposed to endogenous variables that are determined within the system. An example from economics would be the amount of natural resources that a country has is given or exogenous, whereas the total quantity of consumption of goods and services would be endogenous.

The overarching goal of my utility function is that of happiness. In other words the value of my function is measured in terms of my happiness. And of course my objective has been to maximize this function not at a point in time but over a much longer time horizon that is my lifetime. The question is what are the factors that have contributed to my happiness. Some of the exogenous variables in my utility function are given – over which I have no control. There are other variables in my utility function that have been determined partly by me through the choices that I have made and partly by the interaction of different forces in the system. Most of the variables in this function are qualitative in nature with some quantitative variables. I must admit that I do feel happy when the Dow-Jones average shoots up!

In terms of some of the exogenous variables that are given – I must say that I have been very fortunate. I was born in Calcutta, India in a very loving family with wonderful parents. They supported me in every way – and gave me unconditional love. My mother now lives in Calcutta by herself and she is a true source of joy and inspiration in my life and my family's life. I have very happy memories of my childhood. I have two sisters: one older, and the other younger. I am in the middle. My sisters are just as wonderful – they would do anything for me. They live in India and are always eagerly awaiting our visits. Although I was born in Calcutta, I lived in many different parts of India till I was ten years old. The reason being, my father as a company executive had a transferable job which involved a lot of traveling. When I was ten years old and my elder sister was thirteen, we had to leave our parents to come to Calcutta. This was a big event in my life. We lived with our relatives in Calcutta so that we could attend one of the best schools there. Our relatives were wonderful people and were extraordinarily caring. However, their lifestyle was a lot different from ours. At a very early age in life I learned to adjust, adapt, and be flexible. This experience has helped me to a great extent to deal with different situations in life including my life at home with my husband and children, with my friends, colleagues at work and my students. Also my experience of living in a different country with a different culture has been quite enjoyable. My relatives in Calcutta were also very religious. Living with them, I learned the simple practices of religion at an early age and developed faith in a higher power that has helped me enormously to meet life's challenges.

I also grew up with lots of books and music around me. Music has always been a special part of my life and my family's life especially the influence of Rabindranath Tagore and his poetry and songs. Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1911. The words of Poet Yeats deeply resonate with me: “To read Tagore is to forget the troubles of the world”. I have taken Tagore music vocal lessons even in this country along with my daughter and son, which have given me enormous pleasure. Tagore songs are so rich in their spirituality, so spontaneous – that any one can relate to them and see one's own image in them. Tagore's writings transcend the limits of time and place.

In so far as choosing the endogenous variables in my utility function – I feel that my parents, especially my mother, had an enormous impact on me. I am probably the fifth generation in my family to have received college education. However, as a woman, I am in my family's first generation to have received a college degree in the pursuit of higher education. Even in my generation, the predominant motivation behind receiving a college baccalaureate degree for women was mainly a qualification for marriage rather than empowerment through education. In this regard, my family's conviction in the empowering value of education especially for women led me to work hard to excel in academics and to decide to choose a career path as an educator and dedicated teacher.

I strongly believe that education has tremendous power to empower women, men, and children and eventually society to realize its great potential, and hopefully help create a more humane, constructive society. I am a firm believer in the fact that starting from alleviation of poverty in the developing world, to gaining of socio-economic advancement amongst classes in the developed world, are largely determined by mass access to education. However, this is an enormous challenge and is more easily said then done. The literacy problem exists both in the developed and the developing world, although the nature of the problem may seem different. I will tell you a story to illustrate what I am trying to say:

In Calcutta India, my mother has a helper. She comes every day to help my mother with her household chores. She also helps three to four other families in the same capacity. She has no formal education. She has two children. Once when I was in India in one of my summer breaks, I asked her if her children go to school. Schooling in Calcutta is free. So in that sense there is access to education. However, she said that she had tried very hard with all possible means, but her oldest son refuses to wake up in the morning to go to school. Eventually she has given up. Her son collects valuables from trash and sells them to make money. So how does one resolve this problem? One needs to create an environment to motivate truants to go to school. I must say that one of our friends has done a wonderful thing by setting up a small institution in Calcutta with his own funds to motivate the children from slums to attend school and receive computer training in his institute. He pays them a stipend to attend these training sessions. He has around eighty students. This might sound like a small step. But it is better to take small steps rather than doing nothing. The other day when I was reading the Time magazine, I came across a quotation “It's a shame when young people don't like going to school and aren't engaged by that experience” Time, Nov 13, 2000. In the developed world – there is the constant distraction from different sources of entertainment that provide instant gratification.

Last Summer when I attended my daughter's college graduation the commencement speaker (who happens to be one of my former teachers), Nobel Laureate, Amartya Sen reiterated the importance of empowering women and said that “there is now overwhelming evidence that women's empowerment through schooling, employment opportunities has the most far-reaching effects on the lives of all men, women and children.”

I come from a developing country. Poverty and the enormous inequality that exist in this world as well as within a country are extremely disconcerting to me. I have not been able to take any major initiatives to resolve any of these problems directly, except for taking some very small steps, which have given me a lot of pleasure. I sponsor three children; two of them live in remote Indian villages and one in an orphanage in Calcutta. When I receive letters and pictures of these children – I feel very happy and am very grateful to have been able to touch at least a few lives. I must admit this is a very small act in terms of what the world needs and I have gained a lot more from this experience than what I have given.

Going back to my utility function. How do I maximize the value of the function? What is my coping mechanism when things don't work out the way I want? I draw a lot of strength from my faith and religion. I believe in the value of being balanced in life. The key belief of Hinduism is to perform one's dharma or duties without being too caught up in the expectations of the fruits of one's actions. This is no doubt a challenge, yet I try to focus on the task at hand—without worrying too much about succeeding or failing. The maxim “contentment is better than riches” deeply resonates with me. I try to teach my children that having peace of mind is better than constantly desiring more and more material goods. I also realize that every thing is transitory – what seems very important today, may not seem that important tomorrow. Life is like a stage where we are all performing for a short while and as soon as the stage master calls us we have to exit. So I try not to take life's experiences too seriously.

I would like to end my last lecture with the following prayer. I am reading one of my favorite poems of Rabindranath Tagore from Gitanjali:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action---

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father let my country awake.

Thank you.

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Supriya Lahiri is a professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Lowell.