Poverty and Famines
By Amartiya Sen
(New York: Oxford University press, 1981), pages 257,
price - Rs. 195)
Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1988. He authored the book Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivative on basis of a study undertaken for the Work Employment Programme, launched by the International Labour Organisation in 1969. Amartya Sen has theorized as a social scientist on the causes of starvation in general and famines in particular. He tries to answer two important questions ‘How severe is poverty? And what causes famines?’
The method of analysis adopted by Amartya Sen is called the ‘entitlement approach’, which concentrates on ownership and exchange. He examines problems of conceptualizing and measuring poverty. Sen explains that poverty is a matter of deprivation. He elaborates that poverty and inequality are related closely to one another, but they are distinct concepts and neither subsumes the other.
Amartya Sen further analyses the entitlement approach in detail and applies it to four case studies of famines in Asia and Africa. The account of the four famines – Great Bengal Famine (Asia) of 1943, the Ethiopian Famine (Africa) of 1973-75, famines in the Sahel (border of the Sahara desert, Africa) of early seventies and Bangladesh Famine (Asia) of 1974 -- are dealt in empirical and rational manner and with humane touch. All the four case studies give detailed description of the crisis, its causes and its impact on the victims. He has given many tables and has illustrated the case studies with appropriate maps and graphs.
Sen continues his theorizing and explains that famines imply starvation, but not vice versa. And, again, starvation implies poverty, but not vice versa. Lastly, in the final chapter Sen looks at general issues of deprivation related to entitlement systems. The book Poverty and Famines includes four appendices – “Exchange Entitlement”, “Illustrative Models of Exchange Entitlement”, “Measurement of Poverty” and “Famine Mortality: A Case Study” along with an extensive bibliography. This book will be of interest for social researchers as well as for general readers. The analysis presented has a relevance to matters of practical concern. The book has been highly appreciated.