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Amartya Kumar Sen (born November 3, 1933) is an
India|Indian Economist best known for his work on
famine, human development theory, welfare
economics, and the underlying mechanisms of
poverty. He received the Bank of Sweden Prize in
Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel|Nobel
Prize in Economics for his work in welfare
economics in 1998 and the Bharat Ratna in 1999.

==Education and career==
Sen was born in Santiniketan, West Bengal, the
University town established by the poet
Rabindranath Tagore, another Indian Nobel Prize
winner.  Tagore is said to have given Amartya Sen
his name.  Sen first studied in India at the
school system of Visva-Bharati University,
Presidency College, Kolkata and at the Delhi
School of Economics before moving to Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he earned a Bachelor of
Arts|BA in 1956 and then a Doctor of
Philosophy|Ph.D. in 1959. He has taught economics
at University of Calcutta|University of Calcutta,
Jadavpur University, Delhi, University of
Oxford|Oxford, London School of Economics, Harvard
University|Harvard and was Master of Trinity
College, Cambridge|Trinity College, University of
Cambridge|Cambridge,  between 1997 and 2004. In
January 2004 Sen returned to Harvard, where he
currently teaches.

==Important works==
Sen's seminal papers in the late sixties and early
1970s|seventies helped develop the theory of
social choice, which  first came to prominence in
the work by the American economist Kenneth
Arrow|Kenneth Arrow, who, while working in the
fifties at the RAND Corporation, famously proved
that all voting rules, be they majority voting or
supermajority|two thirds-majority or status quo,
must inevitably conflict some basic democratic
norm. Sen's contribution to the literature was to
show under what conditions Arrow's Impossibility
Theorem would indeed come to pass as well as to
extend and enrich the theory of social choice,
informed by his interests in history of economic
thought and philosophy. 

Sen's best-known work is his 1981 volume Poverty
and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and
Deprivation, in which he demonstrated that famine
occurs not from a lack of food, but from
inequalities built into mechanisms for
distributing food. In addition to his important
work on the causes of famines, Sen's work in the
field of development economics has had
considerable influence in the formulation of the
Human Development Report, published by the United
Nations Development Programme. This annual
publication that ranks countries on a variety of
economic and social indicators owes much to the
contributions by Sen among other social choice
theorists in the area of economic measurement of
poverty and inequality.

Sen's revolutionary contribution to development
economics and social indicators is the concept of
'capability.'  Realizing that top-down development
will always trump human rights as long as the
definition of terms remains in doubt (is a 'right'
something that must be provided or something that
simply cannot be taken away?), Sen argues that
governments should be measured against the
concrete capabilities of their citizens.  For
instance, in the United States citizens have a
hypothetical "right" to vote.  To Sen, this
concept is fairly empty.  He would ask whether all
the requisite conditions are met so that the
citizen has the capability to vote.  These
conditions can range from the very broad, such as
the availability of education, to the very
specific, such as transportation to the polls.
Only when such barriers are removed can the
citizen truly be said to act out of personal
choice.  It is up to the individual society to
make the list of minimum capabilities guaranteed
by that society.   For an example of the
'capabilities approach' in practice, see Martha
Nussbaum's Women and Human Development.  

Sen was a ground-breaker among late
twentieth-century economists in his insistence on
asking questions of value, long removed from
"serious" economic consideration.  He mounted one
of the few major challenges to the economic model
that posited self-interest as the prime motivating
factor of human activity. While his line of
thinking remains peripheral, there is no question
that his work helped to re-prioritize a
significant sector of economists and development
workers, even the policies of the United Nations.

==Personal Life==
His first wife was Nabaneeta Dev, with whom he has
two children:  Antara and Nandana Sen|Nandana.
Their marriage broke up shortly after they went to
London in 1971. His second wife was Eva Colorni,
with whom he lived from 1973 onwards. She died
from stomach cancer quite suddenly in 1985. They
had two children Indrani and Kabir. His present
wife is Emma Mayer Amschel Rothschild
family|Rothschild.
 

== Quotes ==
:The absurdity of Public choice
theory|public-choice theory is captured by Nobel
Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen in the
following little scenario: "Can you direct me to
the railway station?" asks the stranger.
"Certainly," says the local, pointing in the
opposite direction, towards the post office, "and
would you post this letter for me on your way?"
"Certainly," says the stranger, resolving to open
it to see if it contains anything worth stealing.

:--Linda McQuaig, All You Can Eat

When referring to sanctions against Burma: they
"are more likely to be effective there than almost
anywhere else I can imagine" — provided
other countries join in.

:Reducing corruption in developing countries by
opening markets would be reason enough to
liberalize, even if no other economic benefits
materialized.

:--
http://unix.dfn.org/printer_EconomicFreedom_.shtml
Handbook of Economic Freedom

:No substantial famine has ever occurred in any
independent and democratic country with a
relatively free press.
::--http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/jod/10.3sen.html
Democracy as a Universal Value, Journal of
Democracy 10.3 (1999) 3-17
:*He discounts the famine in the United Kingdom in
1846 as an instance of alien rule.

==List of main publications:==
*Sen Amartya, On Economic Inequality, New York,
Norton, 1973
*Sen Amartya, Poverty and Famines : An Essay on
Entitlements and Deprivation, Oxford, Clarendon
Press, 1982
*Sen Amartya, Choice, Welfare and Measurement,
Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982
*Sen Amartya, Food Economics and Entitlements,
Helsinki, Wider Working Paper 1, 1986
*Sen Amartya, On Ethics and Economics, Oxford,
Basil Blackwell, 1987
*Drèze J and Sen A.K. Hunger and Public Action. 
Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989.
*Sen Amartya, Inequality Reexamined, Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 1992
*Martha Nussbaum|Nussbaum Martha, and Sen Amartya.
The Quality of Life.  Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1993
*Sen Amartya, Development as Freedom, Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 1999
*Sen, Amartya, The Argumentative Indian, London:
Allen Lane, 2005.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,152349
8,00.html review  

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=amartya+sen&ie
=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Search See Google
Scholar for more

==See also==
*Liberalism
*Contributions to liberal theory
*List of economists
*List of economics consultancies and think tanks
* Batterbury, S.P.J  and J.L. Fernando. 2004.
http://simonbatterbury.net/pubs/Senlongversion.htm
Amartya Sen. In P. Hubbard, R. Kitchin and G.
Valentine  (eds.) Key thinkers on space and place.
London: Sage. 251-257.

==External Links==
*http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/1998/se
n-autobio.html Autobiography
*http://www.indiatogether.org/interviews/sen.htm
Reflections of an economist Interview

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succession box |
  before=Michael Atiyah|Sir Michael Atiyah |
  title=Trinity College, Cambridge|Master of
Trinity College, Cambridge |
  years=1998–2004 |
  after=Martin Rees|Sir Martin Rees

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