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Articles by Amartya SenSubscribe to Amartya Sen

Is Nationalism a Boon or a Curse?

It would be wrong to see nationalism as either an unmitigated evil or a universal virtue. It can be both, a boon and a curse - depending on the circumstances two sides of the same coin. Nationalism tends to be negative when people confront each other along the lines of national divisions; it can be productive enough when social divisions and hostilities tend to be based on other identities, such as religion, community or ethnicity. Central to understanding the contingent variability of the role of nationalism is the need to see nationality as one identity among many that we all have.

Our Past and Our Present

India's past has become an ideological battleground. The central issue in this battle is not the invoking of the past, but precisely how the past is brought into discussions about the present. Related to this basic inquiry is the subsidiary question: does the acknowledgement of the continuing relevance of the past imply that "the distant past must guide how one acts in the present"? The recognition of the relevance of the past must be distinguished from the case for being guided by the past in a choice-independent way. It is important to recognise that the significance of the past for us today involves selection and choice in which our contemporary concerns can have a reasonable role. It is also important to see that this connection between the present and our involvement with the past neither undermines the need to look for veracity and ascertained evidence nor removes the case for deliberately concentrating on those cases in which the lessons involved have particular relevance to our concerns today. The problem of selections from the past involves, in this sense, both epistemology and practical reason.

The Three R's of Reform

We cannot understand the requirements of reform without sorting out what social objectives and values should be promoted by public policy. It would be a great mistake to take reform to be some means-centred, goal-independent institutional requirement that 'must be' pursued without asking any questions about how that institutional demand would influence the lives of the people that are involved. There may or may not be any payment-free lunch, but it would certainly be extremely odd to pursue ethics-free reform. If one were to be asked what three factors would be most important in the task of initiating and implementing a major reform, the factors to be emphasised would be three R's: reach, range, and reason. The reach of the results to be achieved, the range of the ways and means to be used, and the reason for choosing the priorities we pursue.

Malnutrition of Rural Children and the Sex Bias

the Sex Bias Amartya Sen Sunil Sengupta This paper reports on some empirical field work done by the authors at the Agro-Economic Research Centre at Santiniketan.

On Sau s Revisit

My understanding of quotation 4 is that it implies a rising trend in the growth rate over a relatively long stretch of time

India The Doing and the Undoing

February 12, 1983 of Agriculture, June 28. Raj, K N 1976; 'Growth and Stagnation in Indian Industrial Development", February.
Reddy. V N 1978: "Growth Rates'', EPW, May 13.

Farm Size and Labour Use Analysis and Policy

Ashok Rudra Amartya Sen The debate on size and productivity relations in Indian agriculture', which began with the publication of a note by one of the authors of this paper eighteen years ago, was joined by the other author six years later. Since then, many other scholars, including the present authors, have contributed to the debate.

David Glass

authority like the Swedish Ombudsman to deal with the problem. This 'Ombudsmania' from which professionals in law and public administration suffered, appears to have waned recently. This is seen in the reactions to the Report of the Joint Select Committee of Parliament on the Lokpal Bill as reflected in the news media. Or it may be because corruption has become so much a part of everyone's life that people have evolved strategies and styles of operating such a system and the insecurity of dealing with an uncorrupt administration is perhaps what makes people loath to tamper with the existing arrangements.

Poverty, Inequality and Unemployment: Some Conceptual Issues in Measurement

Poverty as a concept is closely related to inequality. Given the average income level, a higher level of inequality (reflected by the usual measures) will tend to be associated with a higher level of poverty. Furthermore, the so-called "poverty line" may sometimes be drawn in the light of the socially accepted "minimal" standard of living, and the latter can be influenced by the average income level, so that poverty measures, thus defined, may catch an aspect of relative inequality as well.

Utilitarianism and Inequality

Amartya Sen Utilitarianism is perhaps the most commonly used framework of thought for policy making.
From the distant reaches of optimal accumulation to the more mundane exercises of benefit-cost analysis, the additive social welfare function is a common basis for thinking and action. Benefits to different individuals (or groups) are added and the sum compared for selecting optimal plans or projects in theory, and something of that rubs off in practical decision taking as well Is this indeed a good basis for systematic thinking on planning problems ?

Aspects of Indian Civil Aviation

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