AMARTYA KUMAR SEN

AMARTYA KUMAR SEN

1.When did Amartya form and develop his educational attitude and orientation?

Amartya Kumar Sen was born on November 3rd, 1933 at Shantiniketan, Bengal, to Amita and Ashutosh Sen and was christened ‘Amartya’. Amartya’s formal education began in St. Gregory’s school- Dhaka (now in Bangladesh). However, he was soon moved to Shantiniketan, and it was mainly in Tagore’s school that his educational attitudes were formed. He had decided at a very young age that he would become a teacher and researcher. This thinking remained with him in his growing years. During his young age, he was interested in Sanskrit, Mathematics, and Physics but he settled down in Economics. Amartya Sen was greatly influenced by the cultural diversity in the world, which was well reflected in the curriculum of Shantiniketan.

2.What did Amartya learn from the death of Kader Mia in Dacca?

Amartya had experienced the caste, cultural, economic, racial discrimination in the society. He had been feeling a sense of separation. He had experienced the shift from a United India people to a sectarian society of Hindu, Muslim or Sikh communities. One afternoon in Dhaka, a man named Khader Mia came screaming to Amartya’s house in a profusely bleeding condition Khader Mia had come for searching job. Because he is muslim, some of the gangsters attacked him. Amaratya’s father immediate rushed him to a hospital. Later on, that person passed away. That experience was devastating experience and then he decided that the dangers of narrowly identified identities, such narrow perceptions have to be put an end in communitarian politics. He understood that economic uncertainties forces man to violate other kinds of freedom. When Amaratya Sen arrived at Calcutta to study at Presidency College, he had fairly formed an opinion that cultural identity had been formed and there is an urgent need to form the unity among people instead of sectarian division.

3.How did Calcutta’s Presidency College influence collegian Amartya?
OR
What aspect of the Bengal famine struck Amartya?

Amartaya’s intellectual horizon was radically broadened by the educational excellence of Presidency college. He studied under some of the great teachers and was particularly influenced by Bhabutosh Datta, Tapas Majumdar and Dinesh Bhattachaya.

The student community of Presidency college was also politically active. He ran evening schools for illiterate rural children in the neighbouring villages, which he felt was badly needed for systematic political broadening and social enlargement.

Amartya Sen studied at Presidency college from 1951 to 1953. In 1943 Bengal famine struck and more than three million had died. This inevitable soar experience affected Sen and in this menace most of the landless rural labourers was affected. Later on, Sen had come to know that sectarian inequality is prevailing not only in a particular state but it is deeply rooted across the country.

AMARTYA KUMAR SEN

4.Why did Amartya go to Cambridge in 1953?
OR
How did Amartya utilize his Ph.D thesis before the time of its submission?
OR
Who were the people influenced in advancing his study?

In 1953 Amartya Sen moved from Calcutta to Cambridge to study at Trinity college. Though he already obtained a B.A. from Calcutta University with Economics major and Mathematics minor, he enrolled in Cambridge for another B.A. in Pure Economics, which he quickly finished in 2 years.

At the end of the first year of research, Amartya Sen decided to go on leave for two years and came back to India to do in Ph.D thesis under the supervision of the famous Economics Methodologist A.K.Dasgupta of Banaras Hindu University. In Calcutta, he was also appointed to a chair in Economics at the newly created Jadavpur Univeristy where he was asked to set up a new Department of Economics.

While the Ph.D thesis was maturing with the mere passage of time, Amartya Sen submitted it for a competitive prize fellowship at Trinity College, where he got elected to it and went back to Cambridge. Since this fellowship gave him 4 years of freedom Amartya Sen decided to study philosophy during that period. He chose philosophy just because of broadening of his studies and he found philosophical studies very rewarding on their own. It also gave him the opportunity to work with major philosophers like John Ravels, Isaiah Thomas Scanion, Robert Dworkin, Bernard Williams, Derek Parfit, Robert Nozick and others.

In 1963 Amartya Sen decided to leave Cambridge and went to Delhi as Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics. He taught in Delhi till 1971, a period he considered the most intellectually challenging in his academic life. Along with eminent economist K.N. Ray as the head of the Delhi School, Amartya was able to succeed in making the school a pre-eminent centre of education of Economics and social science in India. During his stint at the Delhi School, Amartya plunged himself full steam into the social choice theory because of the dynamic intellectual atmosphere of the Delhi University.

5.How did he relate the pure theory of social choice to more practical problems?
When Amartya worked at the Delhi School of Economics as a Professor of Economics. There he was succeded in making the school a pre-eminent centre of education in economics and social Sciences in India. During his stint at the Delhi School, Amartya plunged himself full steam into the social choice theory because of the dynamic intellectual atmosphere of the Delhi university. Some choice theory related importantly to a more widespread interest in aggregation in economic assessment and policymaking. In his book Collective Choice and Social Welfare published in 1970 he made an effort to take an overall view of social choice theory. For some time he had to undergo medical examination for cancer. After he recouped, he shifted his interest from pure theory of social choice to more ‘practical’ problems.

The progress of the pure theory of social choice with an expanded information base was very crucial to asses poverty, to evaluate inequality, to clarify the nature of relative deprivation, to develop distribution – adjusted national income measures, to clarify the penalty of unemployment, to analyze violations of personal liberties and basic rights and to characterize gender disparities and women’s relative disadvantage. The results were published in the 1970’s and early 1980’s but were compiled together in two collections of articles, namely, Choice, Welfare, Measurement: Resources, Values and Development, published respectively in 1980 and 1984.


6.What kind of attachment Amartya Sen has for his motherland India?

Amartya Sen always kept close connections with Indian Universities. His attachment to his motherland was so strong that he never stayed away for more than six months at a stretch while being abroad. When the Nobel Prize was award to him, he used part of the prize money to float his Pratichi Trust, which does social and charity work in India and Bangladesh on literacy, basic health care and gender equality. It was a passion he had had since the days when he was involved in running evening schools in surrounding villages when he was studying in Shantiniketan fifty years ago. Sen has had a particular interest in the most impoverished members of a society.
With this we understand that how closely he is associated with our motherland.

7. What was his opinion about Economics?

As Amartya Sen says, “Economics deals with assessment of how well things are going for the members of the society. That is the central thing about welfare economics”. It is the economics that decides evalution judgment, assessment. He had thical dimension to the discussion of vital economic problems.

8.When did Amarty Sen receive the Nobel Prize for Economics and what is he known as in India?

Dr. Amartya Sen has published over twenty books and is the recipient of many awards. He received the Indira Gandhi Gold Medal Award of the Asiatic Society 1994, Nobel Prize for Economics 1998, Eisenhowr Medal, USA and Honarary Companion of Honour, UK for the year 2000.

Known in India as the Mother Teresa of Economics, Amartya sen has spent a lifetime fighting poverty with analysis rather than activism. His ideas have had a global impact. He continues his work and academic teaching as Master, Trinity College, Cambridge, UK.

AMARTYA KUMAR SEN

9.In America in 1985, what was Amartya involved in?

In 1985, Amartya shifted to America. There he got himself involved in analyzing the overall implications of the perspective on welfare economics and political philosophy.


10.How useful was his stint in Delhi during the period 1963 to 1971?
or
11.How did he relate the pure theory of social choice to more practical problems?

When Amartya worked at the Delhi School of Economics as a Professor of Economics. There he was succeded in making the school a pre-eminent centre of education in economics and social Sciences in India. During his stint at the Delhi School, Amartya plunged himself full steam into the social choice theory because of the dynamic intellectual atmosphere of the Delhi university. Some choice theory related importantly to a more widespread interest in aggregation in economic assessment and policymaking. In his book Collective Choice and Social Welfare published in 1970 he made an effort to take an overall view of social choice theory. For some time he had to undergo medical examination for cancer. After he recouped, he shifted his interest from pure theory of social choice to more ‘practical’ problems.

AMARTYA KUMAR SEN