Dr Amartya Sen Kumar - Summary

 

Dr. Amartya Kumar Sen

 

Part 1 - Shantiniketan, Tagore and Amartya 

Born on November 3, 1933, at Shantiniketan in Bengal. He was given the name Amartya by the first Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. He had his schooling in St. George’s School in Dhaka and then later at Shantiniketan.  Shantiniketan and Tagore’s teaching had a profound influence on his life.  At a very young age, he decided to become a teacher and a researcher.  When he was in Shantiniketan, he used to run evening schools in the surrounding villages. Even though he studied Sanskrit, Mathematics and Physics, he was fascinated by Economics He was fascinated by the cultural diversity in the world. The syllabus/ curriculum at Shantiniketan had cultural/analytical and scientific heritage of India, but also other non-western cultures - East & South East Asia (China, Japan, Indonesia, Korea) West Asia and Africa. 

 

Part 2 - Two memories: 

The memory of an incident that occurred in Dhaka in his childhood made him think about divided humanity. A man by the name of Khader Mia was attacked by some things as he was working in a neighbour’s house. Khader Mia came to Amartya Sen’s home bleeding and Amartya’s father took him to the hospital. Khader had come to the Hindu dominated area in search of work and that too for a small payment. He couldn’t see the hungry faces of his children. He later died at the hospital. Amartya Sen was disturbed by this and he realized that it was extreme poverty that led this man to his death. He also realized the divisiveness in the human race. He aspired for plurality.

 

The memory of the Bengal Famine of 1943 also made him think about poverty and economics. He was fascinated by the class-dependent character of famine. The famine didn’t create problems for his friends or family. The people belonging to the lower class like the landless rural labourers suffered a lot. 

 

Part 3 - Health Issue: 

At the age of 18, he had developed cancer of the mouth. The radiation cured cancer but destroyed the bones in the mouth. After a long operation of nearly seven hours, the doctors were able to repair the bones. 

 

Part 4 - Amartya in Calcutta: 

By the time Amartya Sen arrived at Calcutta to study at Presidency College, he had two ideas reinforced in his mind - One is plurality and the other one is absorption. He was greatly influenced by the educational excellence of his teachers and the political activity among the students. He studied in Presidency from 1951 - 1953. 

 

Part 5 - London - India - London - India

1953 - Amartya Sen moved from Calcutta to Cambridge to study in Trinity College. He did his second B.A in Pure Economics and he finished the course in two years. 

In his first year of research, he took a leave for two years and started his PhD under the supervision of the famous teacher A.K Dasgupta of Banaras University.  At the age of 23, he was asked to establish a new department of Economics at Jadavpur University. He won another Prize fellowship at Trinity College for submitting his PhD thesis. This fellowship gave him 4 years of academic freedom.  In 1963 Amartya Sen decided to leave Cambridge and came to Delhi as a Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics. 

 

Part 6 - What is Welfare Economics: 

Welfare Economics: is an Economics which is an assessment of how well things are going for the members of the society. He combined the tools of Economics and Philosophy. It is an ethical way of looking at vital economic problems.  Amartya Sen focussed on practical problems rather than the theory. He worked to assess poverty, to evaluate inequality, gender issues, unemployment. All these ideas were published together in two collections of articles (Choice, Welfare, Measurement and Resources Values and Development). He wrote about Welfare Economics in his book (Inequality Re-examined) He used the money he received from Nobel Prize to start Pratichi Trust which does social and charity work in India and Bangladesh. 

 

Part 7 - Awards and Present Status: 

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. He is known as the Mother Teresa of Economics. He dedicated his life to fight poverty. He continues to work as a teacher and researcher at Trinity College, Cambridge U.K