Amartya Sen | Poverty, Famines & Feminism

"Poverty is not just the lack of money; it is not having the capability to realise one's full potential as a human being." those are the great words spoken by noble prize-winning Indian Economist Amartya Sen. He was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory. He was born on November 3, 1933, in Shantiniketan, India. Sen attended Presidency College in Calcutta after which he went on to Trinity College in Cambridge, where he earned a B.A., In 1955, an M.A. in 1959, and a PhD in 1970. 

Amartya Sen makes the case in Progress as Freedom that economic development must focus on enhancing freedom and creating wealth. Being poor shouldn't just be about how much money you make; it should also be about your lack of rights. Sen states that poverty is a complicated, multifaceted issue that needs to be thoroughly examined from all angles. The professor recently stated at a gathering of the Network of Policymakers for Poverty Reduction, an initiative of the Inter-American Development Bank, that "human beings are fully different." 

Sen became interested in famine due to personal experience. He was only nine years old when the Bengal famine of 1943, which resulted in the death of a whopping three million people, outbroke. Sen has subsequently come to the conclusion that the huge loss of life was unnecessary. He thought that while there was enough food available in India at the time, getting it to people was difficult since certain individuals—in this case, rural labourers—lost their employment and their capacity to support themselves. Sen wrote in his 1981 book Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation that food supplies were frequently not severely curtailed during famines. Instead, a multitude of social and economic factors—such as dwindling incomes, unemployment, rising food prices, and inadequate systems for distributing food—led to famine among some groups of society.

He suggests quantifying an individual's ability to achieve with their money rather than their income level, keeping in mind that this ability will differ from person to person and from place to place. The effect of income on each person varies depending on regional, biological, and social factors. The poor typically lack a number of things, including access to opportunity, justice, family and community support, credit, and other productive resources. They also frequently lack access to education, land access, health, and longevity.  Amartya Sen contends that rather than emphasising the outcomes of an individual's functioning, analyses of poverty should concentrate on the individual's capacity to operate. 

In addition to his research on famines and freedoms, as well as the economics of poverty, Sen has identified examples from the realm of women to support his theory. He says that a woman with greater education typically has a better-paying job, better control over her fertility, and better health outcomes for both herself and her offspring. Sen has long advocated that the stereotype of women as heroines who sacrifice themselves for the sake of their homes and families is unhelpful. “I think gender inequality is not the natural human condition. But the idea that somehow women have to be in an inferior position – or not quite such dominant position – is really wholly artificial for me” says Amartya Sen. 

Bibliography 

Tikkanen, A. (2023, June 24). Amartya Sen. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Amartya-Sen

Amartya Sen – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Fri. 7 Jul 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1998/sen/biographical/>