If the government is vulnerable to public opinion, then famines are a dreadfully bad thing to have. You canยt win many elections after a famine, and you donยt like being criticized by newspapers, opposition parties in parliament, and so on. Democracy gives the government an immediate political incentive to act.
Amartya SenIf a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.
Amartya SenBut the idea that I should be a teacher and a researcher of some sort did not vary over the years.
Amartya SenThere are some people who say that theyยre concerned only with poverty but not inequality. But I donยt think that is a sustainable thought. A lot of poverty is, in fact, inequality because of the connection between income and capabilityยhaving adequate resources to take part in the life of the community.
Amartya SenUltimately, imperialism made even the British working classes suffer. This is a point which the British working classes found quite difficult to swallow, but they did, actually.
Amartya SenThe higher education has always appealed to the South Asian social leaders across all the countries in South Asia. But primary education has been neglected. The oddity, by the way, is if you look at the contrast in India, there are some areas like Kerala where there's a long history of educational development.
Amartya Sen