Amartya Sen is an Indian economist and professor who won a Nobel Prize in 1998 in Economic Sciences “for his contributions to welfare economics” (Nobel Prize, 1998). His influential piece, Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970) resulted in a greater focus on social welfare in his industry, leading him to use tools to measure economic inequality that resulted in valuable solutions. Within welfare economics, Sen focused on researching factors that led to poverty and famine. His interest in studying famines came from his childhood experience of the Bengal Famine of 1943 that killed over three million people.
Dr, Sen later found that the famine was not caused by a lack of adequate food but instead by many political and economic reasons related to British imperialism, marginalization, mismanaged resources, and poorly conceived policy that favored feeding colonial powers over local populations. For instance, during WWII boats and rice – the staple food – in Bengal were confiscated or destroyed in thousands of villages (Puri, 2024). The purpose was to thwart a potential Japanese invasion by preventing access to local resources. There were many devastating effects: Fishermen couldn’t go to sea, farmers weren’t able to go upstream to their plots, and artisans were unable to get their goods to market (Puri, 2024). Dr. Sen’s work influenced organizations with specific ways to focus on supporting those living in extreme poverty when addressing food crises.
These days, a more common problem than famine is food insecurity. You can watch and listen to our “TIGERS Tool” relating to food insecurity, housing instability and displacement. The tool briefly outlines the hidden reasons behind food insecurity, and food insecurity with hunger, watch now.
References
Puri, Kavita (2024) Susannah’s grandad ran Bengal when famine killed millions. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1vv9r4012xo
Sen, Amartya (1998) Amartya Sen Biographical. The Nobel Prize. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1998/sen/lecture/
The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica (2024) Amartya Sen. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Amartya-Sen
