Prof. Amartya Kumar Sen is one of the greatest
intellectuals and economists of modern India. Amartya Sen is a
philosopher, economist and a social thinker. At a time when the world was
talking of globalization, liberalization and free market economy, Prof.
Sen dared to differ. No wonder, he was awarded the Noble prize for welfare
economics in the face of market oriented economics. Instead of the growth
oriented economic path to prosperity, Amartya Sen has emphasized the need
for giving a human face to development.
Why Is He
Famous? Amartya Kumar Sen is an economist best known for his work
on famine, Human development theory, welfare economics, and the underlying
causes of poverty and hunger. When the world was talking of free market
economy, Prof. Sen emphasised the need for giving a human face to
development. Amartya Sen is one of those few economists who talk of
political economy of hunger. He received The Bank of Sweden Prize in
Economic Sciences( Noble prize for economics), in memory of Alfred Nobel,
for his work in mathematical economics in 1998. The government of India
awarded him with the highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna in
1999.
Sen's best-known work is Poverty and Famines: An Essay on
Entitlement and Deprivation, in which he established that famine occurs
not from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into mechanisms for
distributing food. In addition to his important work on the causes of
famines, Sen's work in the field of development economics has had
considerable influence in the formulation of the Human Development Report
, published by the United Nations Development Program. The HDI ranks
countries on a variety of economic and social indicators. Amartya Amartya
Sen's other works are- "Choice of Techniques", "Collective Choice and
Social Welfare", "Poverty and Famines", "Development as Freedom"
etc.
Background Amartya Kumar Sen was born on 3rd
November 1933 at Shantiniketan, West Bengal. He received his initial
education at Shantiniketan and then Presidency College, Calcutta. In his
early childhood he was exposed to the plight of the poor. The sight of
people dying during famine shocked him. It was, perhaps, this shocking
experience that made him study the economic mechanism underlying famines
and poverty. Sen first studied in India before moving to Trinity College,
Cambridge, where he earned a BA in 1956 and then a Ph.D. in 1959. He has
taught economics at Calcutta, Delhi School Of Economics (1963-71), Oxford,
Harvard and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, between 1997 and
2004.
Present Position In January 2004, Prof. Amartya Sen
returned to Harvard, where he currently teaches. With the Noble prize,
Prof. Sen is now more determined about his old obsessions like literacy,
basic health care and gender equity specifically in India and Bangladesh.
He has set up the Pratichi Trust, with a part of the prize money, to take
forward his work.
