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EDITORIAL: Amartya Sen and his econ



Subject: EDITORIAL: Amartya Sen and his economic sensibilities

		Editorial & Opinion 
EDITORIAL: Amartya Sen and his economic sensibilities

A professor walked into a class of fresh and eager students who had
enrolled in Economics 101. 

''Those of you who had come to study economics because you want to get rich
one day,'' he said, 

''please put up your hand.'' A few sheepishly identified themselves. 

''You've have come to the wrong class,'' he told them. ''But for the rest
of you, please stay and we shall find out why the majority in the world are
poor.'' 

That professor could well be India's Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel
Prize for Economics. Sen, unlike most of his Nobel predecessors, is noted
not for his study of financial markets but of economic justice, human
welfare and poverty. ''The fact that economics is also concerned with the
poor, the downtrodden, the underdogs of society is something that's very
close to my heart,'' Sen said. 

But in the field of economics, Sen and a few like him, are very much in the
minority. The study of human poverty and welfare is not a sexy branch of
economics; most economists, sad to say, are more enamoured of the dizzying
world of finance and markets. 

Take, for example, last year's Nobel Prize laureates, Myron Scholes and
Robert Merton. They bagged the coveted award for developing a formula for
valuing instruments for speculative trading -- not what many would consider
a socially redeeming and productive activity. Since winning the Nobel, both
went to make millions from betting on currency and stock markets as
partners of a high-flying hedge fund -- Long-Term Capital Management. But
their expertise did not stop LTCM from going bankrupt, if not for a
multi-billion-dollar bail-out by a number of American banks last month at
the behest of the US Federal Reserve. 

The recognition of Sen's work by the Nobel Prize committee is clearly a
marked departure from previous awards. A large majority of the Nobel
laureates dealt in theoretical concepts which have very little to do with
human suffering. Moreover, Sen is Indian-born. Fourteen of the 17
recipients since 1980 hailed from the United States. 

And like the economics masters of old, Sen is not just a professor of
economics. Before he left Harvard for Cambridge early this year, he held
chairs in both economics and philosophy. Such meshing of economics and
philosophy is unusual: most economists today know little about how the
other half of the world lives. Not Sen. 

As a child, Sen handed out rice to starving refugees during the Bengal
famine of 1943 that led to the death of three million people. His research
on famines found that often starvation and plenty co-exist: famines, he
said, are due to a simple fact -- food is readily available but the poor
can't afford them. 

Partly because of Sen's findings, governments have put less emphasis on
distributing food to the poor, and more on rural development to help the
poor to help themselves. 

Sen is also a pioneer in developing new indicators of poverty and
inequality. Until recently, economists measured progress largely by the
nation's per capita income. Many still do. Such measurements only tell how
well countries are doing in general, but little about who exactly is
benefiting from growth. Sen was instrumental in developing the United
Nations' Human Development Index which measures among others, the state of
health, education, employment, housing and poverty. 

And as a philosopher, in addition to opposing the nuclear tests in his own
country, Sen helped challenge the ''Asian values'' that a number of
regional leaders hold dear to, and who have sought to use the Chinese sage,
Confucius, to justify their authoritarianism. 

''Confucius did not recommend blind allegiance to the state,'' Sen said.
''When Zilu asks him how to serve a prince, Confucius replies: 'Tell him
the truth, even if it offends him.''' 

Indeed Sen has dedicated much of his life to tell the truth in a discipline
not known for its regard for ethics. In the process, he may have offended
his colleagues who seek to apologise for the rich: let markets rein free,
they say, and the rich will help the poor. Sen, almost alone, took a very
different stance. With market forces unregulated, the rich, he said, will
not only help themselves, but will take from the poor. 


For that, Amartya Sen richly deserved the Nobel Prize. 
The Nation