Sen, Amartya (1933–)

Human Capability

Capability is the freedom of a person to lead one kind of life rather than another, and for Sen it is the goal of development. In Development as Freedom (1999) he argues that “Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choices and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency.” Achieving development requires the expansion and improvement of capabilities and entitlements for the poor and underprivileged. He believes democracy is best suited to the expansion of freedoms, and—against Gandhi—he favors cosmopolitan, secular democracies over communitarianism, localism, and potentially damaging forms of identity politics.

Sen has also revised the measurement of poverty rates and human development, contributing to the Human Development Index (HDI) in the Human Development Report. The argument is that development policy should enhance capability, rather than blindly pursue economic growth. Critics have applauded Sen's reasoning, but lament the lesser focus in his work on exactly how freedoms are diminished by violence, oppression, and state actions.

Poverty and Famine

Secondly, understanding poverty and famine. Sen witnessed the effects of the 1943–45 famine in India. His most famous work, Poverty and Famines (1981), suggests famine is caused by the inability of individuals to access food in times of great need, even when food supplies are adequate. Famine is a food demand problem, not a supply problem, as Malthus had argued. Those who starve are people who lack entitlements to food.

There are various types of entitlements, including those based on production, labor, trade, and inheritance. The entitlement model has been widely accepted. It is used in famine relief, and famine [Page 1584]early warning systems now look carefully at price signals and purchasing behavior. Sen argues that famines don't occur in political democracies. Yet as Ben Fine, a former Sen student, says, there is always a political economy to famine that best explains why people starve.

Michael Watts concurs that entitlements are constituted and reproduced through conflict, negotiation and struggle. Entitlement failure, therefore, is embedded within a social and political process. Alex de Waal and David Keen have pointed out the shortcomings of the entitlement model where war and conflict are used as political weapons by states and rebels—greed and grievance, rather than entitlement failures, may also explain the presence of famine in such situations.

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