Amartya Sen to receive US Humanities Medal from Obama

New York: US president Barack Obama on Monday will award the National Medals of Arts and Humanities to Indian economist Amartya Sen who won his Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998 for his studies of the roots of poverty. Harvard University-based Sen, who retains his Indian citizenship, is the first Indian to be honoured with the medal that is typically awarded to US citizens. The White House has chosen to recognise Sen as an economist and philosopher who has offered unique insights into the “causes of poverty, famine, and injustice." “By applying philosophical thinking to questions of policy, he has changed how standards of living are measured and increased our understanding of how to fight hunger,” said the White House citation. Superstardom is not the normal lot of a professor of Economics, but soft-spoken Sen is something of a national treasure for both India and the United States. From free Air India flights to a dessert named after him, the unassuming professor from Bengal has earlier been awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award. Economics may be an esoteric subject but Sen’s mass appeal lies in the fact that he has spent a lifetime fighting poverty with astute analysis. [caption id=“attachment_211241” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The White House has chosen to recognise Sen as an economist and philosopher who has offered unique insights into the “causes of poverty, famine, and injustice.”"] [/caption] “Amartya Sen has helped give voice to the world’s poor. And, that is no small matter, for the very lives of the world’s poor may depend on having their voices heard. In a lifetime of careful scholarship, Sen has repeatedly returned to a basic theme: even impoverished societies can improve the well-being of their least advantaged members,” wrote Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Giving voice to the world’s poor Despite spending most of his professional life in America and Britain in the rarified world of academe, Sen has always been interested in the problems of society’s poorest members. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in 1998 for his fundamental contributions to at least four fields: social choice theory, welfare economics, economic measurement, and development economics. His ideas have had a global impact. Sen is best known for his work on the causes of famine, which led to the development of practical solutions for preventing the effects of perceived shortages of food. Sen’s interest in famine stemmed from personal experience. As a nine-year-old, he witnessed the Bengal famine of 1943, in which three million people perished. “I was upset by what I saw. My grandfather gave me a small cigarette tin, and said I could fill it with rice and give it to the starving, but only one tinful per family,” Sen told “The Guardian”. Sen observed the famine was clearly class-dependent. Only people on the lowest rung of the economic ladder, such as landless rural labourers, were hungry, and the memory stayed with Sen, prompting him decades later to make a famous case study of that famine and the Ethiopian famine in Wollo in 1973, and the Bangladesh famine in 1974. The opening lines of his study startled the world: “Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.” Sen sifted through data and found that overall food output in Bengal in 1943 was not lower than in 1941, when there was no famine. He demonstrated that the wages paid to farm labourers in 1942 had not kept pace with rising food prices caused by inflation in Kolkata so they just starved. “Sen demonstrated that the Bengal famine was caused by an urban economic boom that raised food prices, thereby causing millions of rural workers to starve to death when their wages did not keep up. And why didn’t the government react by dispensing emergency food relief? Sen’s answer was enlightening. Because colonial India was not a democracy, he said, the British rulers had little interest in listening to the poor, even in the midst of famine,” wrote Sachs. “This political observation gave rise to what might be called Sen’s Law: shortfalls in food supply do not cause widespread deaths in a democracy because vote-seeking politicians will undertake relief efforts; but even modest food shortfalls can create deadly famines in authoritarian societies.” Human Well Being at Center of Development In 1990, Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and other economists developed the United Nations’ Human Development Index to “shift the focus of development economics from national income accounting to people centered policies." Sen’s work provided the intellectual moorings for them to promote the idea that human well-being, not wealth accumulation, should sit at the center of discussions of “development.” Arguing that Gross National Product (GNP) wasn’t enough to assess the standard of living, Sen helped to create the Human Development Index, which has become the authoritative source of welfare comparisons between countries. Among his many contributions to development economics, Sen produced pioneering studies of gender inequality, so he always takes care to write “her” rather than “his” when referring to an abstract person. Taking a stand Sen has taken a stand on emotive issues. In 2006, Sen and author Vikram Seth led a group of activists seeking decriminalisation of gay sex between consenting adults. Gay sex was finally decriminalised in India in a landmark judgment in 2009. Sen also kept the sense of outrage alive over the sedition conviction of doctor and civil rights worker Binayak Sen till he was released on bail in April 2011. The Raipur court had found Binayak Sen, who has helped tribals and others at the margins of society in Chhattisgarh, guilty of sedition for smuggling letters from a jailed Naxal leader out of prison. “After my student days in Cambridge in 1953-56, I guess I have never been away from India for more than six months at a time. This — combined with my remaining exclusively an Indian citizen — gives me, I think, some entitlement to speak on Indian public affairs, and this remains a constant involvement,” Sen said in Les Prix Nobel. Research in action Sen used his Noble Prize money for starting the Pratichi Trust which is committed to “research for action” in India and Bangladesh. Pratichi combats illiteracy, the lack of affordable basic healthcare, and the disadvantages from which women and young girls suffer. Sen who is the Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University, has written over 20 books including “The Argumentative India,” “The Idea of Justice,” “Collective Choice and Social Welfare”, “Inequality Reexamined,” and “Identity and Violence.” Along with Sen, the national medals will be awarded to medieval historian Teofilo Ruiz, actor and director Al Pacino, poet John Ashbery, painter Will Barnett, among others. President Obama will present the medals at a ceremony in the White House East Room on Monday streaming live at 1:45 pm eastern.