A story quoted by Amartya Sen in his just published book The Idea of Justice has become very popular.

It first came to me from my poet friend Pravat Pandey from Kolkata. I didn’t have the book by the time. What he sent was as follows:

This is to illustrate the three different arguments put forth by three children – Anne, Bob and Carla – vis-à-vis their claim for getting the flute for which they are quarrelling.

Anne claims the flute on the ground that she is the only one of the three who knows how to play it (the others do not deny this), and that it would be quite unjust to deny the flute to the only one who can actually play it.

If that is all you knew, the case for giving the flute to the first child i.e. Anne would be strong.

In an alternative scenario, it is Bob who speaks up, and defends his case for having the flute by pointing out that he is the only one among the three who is so poor that he has no toys of his own. The flute would give him something to play with (the other two concede that they are richer and well supplied with engaging amenities).

If you had heard only Bob and none of the others, the case for giving it to him would be strong.

In another alternative scenario, it is Carla who speaks up and points out that she has been working diligently for many months to make the flute with her own labour (the others confirm this), and just when she had finished her work, ‘just then’, she complains, ‘these expropriators came along to try grab the flute away from me’. If Carla’s statement is all you had heard, you might be inclined to give the flute to her in recognition of her understandable claim to something she has made herself.

Having heard all three and their different lines of reasoning, there is difficult decision that you have to make.

I would request you to kindly spare some time for this situation – the three children quarrelling for getting the flute based on their respective arguments, and favour me with your opinion as to (a) who of them should get the flute and (b) why? Please note to elaborate your answer to this ‘why’ putting forth your arguments.

And I replied as follows:

As I could understand it is Carla who has made the flute and with hard work, it is up to her to decide if she wishes to give it to one who knows to play or one who is deprived enough not to have any toy to play. Carla may also retain it with herself and learn to play.

As flute is not a toy, Bob can get it only and only on compassionate ground.I wish he would have shown interest in learning it from the one who has the knowledge.

I don’t know if I understood the story well. My views may be wrong.

But then as usual I tried to find what all information is available on Google. I printed my search, ‘The Idea of Justice and the story of flute’ and got 416,000 entries. If you go through some entries, you can appreciate how the idea of justice is perceived differently by different persons. Perhaps this might be satisfying the writer of ‘The Argumentative India’. I have now started worrying and wondering if it helps our judiciary system positively where millions of cases of justice are pending.