Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence... they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and... a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have.
Amartya SenPoverty is a big barrier if you are at the bottom layer of society, don't know where the next meal is coming from. It is not a big barrier of taking the rich with the poor in a big society to provide schooling for all.
Amartya SenGlobalization can be very unjust and unfair and unequal, but these are matters under our control. Itยs not that we donยt need the market economy. We need it. But the market economy should not have priority or dominance over other institutions.
Amartya SenThe understanding that women are not inferior across the world, it's something that you can get from school, not only from the book but also from chatting with other kids. It's a big impact. One of the curious things is that even when - and this we found from studies - the schools are doing pretty badly in terms of their education, about mathematics and literature and language, going to school transformed people because I think the action of schooling, the activity, is very important.
Amartya SenIt seems to me to be kind of inescapable that one has to be interested in the issue of gender and gender equality. I donยt really expect any credit for going in that direction. Itยs the only natural direction to go in. Why is it that some people donยt see that as so patently obvious as it should be?
Amartya SenThere may be countries [where] there's no gender inequality in schooling, even in higher education, but [where there is] gender inequality in high business. Japan is a very good example of that. You might find cases in the United States where at one level women's equality has progressed tremendously. You don't have the kind of problem of higher women's mortality as you see in South Asia, North Africa, and East Asia, China, too, and yet for American women there are some fields in which equality hasn't yet come.
Amartya Sen