Amartya Sen – Conscience and “Mother Teresa” of Economics
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Amartya Sen is a distinguished Indian economist who was born on the 3rd of November 1933. in 1998, Sen won the Nobel Prize for welfare economics. His work on famine, human development theory, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, and political liberalism have enriched the treasure of economics and modern society.
Amartya Sen’s academic interest began at an early age, where he received exposure in Sanskrit, mathematics and physics before he finally settled for the “eccentric charm of economics”.
Amartya Sen is a distinguished Indian economist who was born on the 3rd of November 1933. in 1998, Sen won the Nobel Prize for welfare economics. His work on famine, human development theory, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, and political liberalism have enriched the treasure of economics and modern society.
Amartya Sen’s academic interest began at an early age, where he received exposure in Sanskrit, mathematics and physics before he finally settled for the “eccentric charm of economics”.
A widely acclaimed economist and intellectual thinker, Sen began his academic journey in India and was deeply affected by the socio-political violence that occurred in his teens. In his early teenage years in Calcutta, Sen had already expressed a matured understanding and sensitivity towards the dynamics and causes of famine, the role that social capital plays in affecting economic choice and opportunities.
At Trinity College where Sen studied, he began his formal theorizing of “social choice”, a concept that marries the idea of political freedom and individual action.
In 1981, Sen published Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, a book in which he demonstrated that famines do not only occur because of food shortages, but rather because of inequalities and discrimination that is built into food distribution processes. In his analysis of the Bengal famine, Sen presented evidence showing that urban economic booms directly caused an increase in food prices that consequently kept poor rural workers out.
Seen as a groundbreaker for his devotion of welfare economics, Amartya Sen is widely known as “the conscience of his profession”.
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Professional Career of Amartya Sen
Sen began his career as a teaching faculty member in Calcutta University. Sen has also been a professor at the Jadavpur University (1956-58), Cambridge University (1957-63, 1998-2004), Delhi School of Economics (1963-71), London School of Economics (1971-77), Oxford University (1977-88) and Harvard University (1988-98).
Amartya Sen also happens to be the first Asian Professor to teach at the Trinity College.
Awards Received by Amartya Sen
The Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998
The Bharat Ratna in 1999
Honorary citizenship from the Bangladesh Government in 1999
Leontef Prize from the Global Development and Environment Institute for his outstanding contribution towards Economics in 2000.
International Humanist Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union in 2002
Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service USA in 2000
The Indian chamber of Commerce conferred up on him the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003
Lifetime Achievement Award from the UNESCAP
Major Publications
Identity and Violence published in 2006
Inequality Reexamined published in 2004
Development as Freedom published in 2000
The Argumentative Indian published in 2005
Reason Before Identity published in 1999
Books By Amartya Sen
Charlie Rose with George Pataki; Amartya Sen (September 15, 1999)
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