Amartya Sen Biography
 |
| Amartya Sen |
Amartya
Sen is the most distinguished economist India has ever produced. Prof. Sen is
the recipient of Nobel Prize for Economics. He won the prize in the year 1998.
He is the sixth Indian to have been honoured with this award. His life-time
commitment to the study of deprivation and disparity was marked by the Bengal
famine of 1943. He has been a proponent of welfare economics. He is also a bold
critic of the Malthusian theory of population growth. According to Sen, there
are other relevant factors apart from the shortage of food materials that cause
famines.
Amartya
Sen was born in 1933 in Shantiniketan in the district of Birbhum, West Bengal,
India. He completed his Ph.D. from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1959. Sen
worked as a professor in different educational institutions. After completing
his Ph. D., he joined Jadavpur University as a professor of economics. Later on
he moved on to the Delhi School of Economics. In 1971, he left DSE (Delhi
School of Economics) and joined London School of Economics. He was the
Professor of Economics there from 1971-1977 and 1980-1988. He also worked as
the Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford. Prof. Sen became the
President of the American Economic Association. He was also the President of
Indian Economic Association and International Economic Association.
Amartya
Sen is a pioneer in Welfare Economics. He has written several books and papers
on welfare and development. He has studied how underdevelopment adversely
affects women. Sen argued that economists who study economic development need
to focus more on developing opportunities for the people. Apart from an
economist, he is also a humanist. He has written several books on poverty, famine,
democracy, gender and social issues.
Sen
has worked not only in economics but also in philosophy. Within economics, he
has made original and critical contributions to theory of development, the
study of technology and employment, poverty, inequality measurement, issues in
the causes of redressal of famines and destitution and population policy.
Amartya
Sen’s philosophical work has made deep explorations into issues of justice,
inequality, morality, liberty, freedom, rationality and objectivity. Recently
Sen has been concerned to be a committed commentator on issues of social and
political salience. He has done against religious fundamentalism and the
nuclear bomb.
Sen’s
great achievement has been to re-establish both the centrality and the scientific
validity of value-orientation in economics.
 |
| Amartya Sen with Manmohan Singh |
Sen
has expressed himself firmly and unequivocally but not stridently. In 1999, he
was honoured with Bharat Ratna. His work has attempted to broaden the horizon
of economic analysis. He has pointed out that the goal of a well-performing
economic system is not just more goods and services but improving the lives of
most of the people. He has seen the development of human abilities as the real
end of economic growth and the real reason to be an economist.
Major
Publications :
(1)
Choice of Techniques; (2) Collective Choice and Social Welfare; (3) On Economic
Equality; (4) Poverty and Famines; (5) An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation;
(6) Inequality Re-examined; (7) Development and Freedom.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
Post a Comment