Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen releases the study report titled 'The living World of the Adivasi of West Bengal: Ethnographic Exploration' at Asiatic Society in Kolkata.
Legendary poet Shankha Ghosh (R) with Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen releases noted author late 'Nabanita Deb Sen's Collections of Writings-2' during her 83rd birthday,at Rabindra Sada...
Infosys Co-Founder N R Narayan Murthy and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen during the Infosys Science Foundation award ceremony in Bengaluru.
Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen signs autographs for fans after delivering the foundation day lecture of Institute of Development Studies in Kolkata.
Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen during the foundation day lecture of Institute of Development Studies in Kolkata.
Posters of Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen's recent comments on chants of 'Jai Shri Ram' in display, in Kolkata. Sen recently delivered a lecture at Jadavpur University where ...
Visva-Bharati University Vice-Chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty felicitates Nobel laureate Amartya Sen during the 1st Ashok Rudra Memorial Lecture, in Birbhum.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen seen during his morning walk at Shantiniketan, in Birbhum district.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen with daughter actress Nandana Sen (R) leave from Bolpur (Shantiniketan) railway station to visit their ancestral home ‘Pratichi’, in Birbhum.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen interacts with the media during a programme at Santiniketan in Birbhum district of West Bengal,
Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen during a shooting for a documentary film on him, at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan in Birbhum district of West Bengal.
Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen releases 'Living Reality of Muslims in West Bengal:A Report',as noted poet Shankha Ghosh(L) looks on.
President Pranab Mukherjee honours Jonardon Ganeri with the Infosys Prizes for the Year 2015 in Humanities at the award function in New Delhi. Infosys Co-founder N. R. Narayana Mur...
Economist Amartya Sen delivers the annual Rajendra Mathur Memorial Lecture, organised by the Editors Guild of India in New Delhi
A girl puts tilak on the forehead of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen during a discussion of a book titled, 'Rabindranath Tagore: One Hundred Years of Global Reception', edited by Martin...
Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen unveiling first five books the series of The Murty Classical Library of India as professor of South Asian studies at Columbia University Sheld...
Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen gives Infosys Prize 2014 to Shubha Tole in Life Science category for her contribution in studying the hippocampus and amygdala-centres of learn...
NR Narayan Murthy, President of the Board of Trustees, Infosys Science Foundation and Founder, Infosys and Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen with the Jury and Award winners duri...
Amartya Sen after casting his vote in Birbhum, West Bengal
R. Jagannathan in the DNA on Amartya Sen's latest:
The book does not say anything Amartya Sen has not already said before. He has criticised our excessive preoccupation with building "just" institutions instead of a "just" society. The latter would include good institutions, but one would monitor outcomes of actual societal behaviour and keep making course corrections. Debates over what constitutes a just order are also less important than adopting a common-sense approach to reducing gross injustices through public reasoning.
The best part of Sen's jargon-filled book is where he explains his ideas through examples. This is where Ashoka, Akbar and Arjuna figure in large doses. Through Sen's lens, all three emerge as one-dimensional heroes, reasoning automatons, not real people.
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Jaithirth Rao in the Indian Express joins issue with Amartya Sen's recent expressions of "closeness, attachment, even fondness, for the leftist parties in India’s polity":
Contemporary Indian leftists represent their own selfish party interests and their sense of misplaced historical determinism which is locked in a time-warp. They do not care for underprivileged citizens and certainly do not care to improve the lot of the poor. In Sen’s own paradigm, Indian leftists pursue purist, ideologically correct “Niti”. They have no concern for “Nyaya” or just consequences...
...The final nail in the coffin of leftist pretensions has been driven in by two recent data points. The Sachar Commission tells us that Muslim citizens in West Bengal are on every count worse off than their counterparts in most other states, not excluding much-maligned Gujarat. And West Bengal has been virtually the last state in implementation of the NREGA. So much for the Left’s concern for “Nyaya” for Muslim citizens or the rural poor!
Read the full piece: Set the record straight
Hasan Suroor, in the Hindu, describes a little quiz that Amartya Sen tried on his audience at the London Literature Festival the other day:
Three children — Anne, Bob and Carla — are quarrelling over a flute: Anne claims the flute on the ground that she is the only one of the three who knows how to play it; Bob demands it on the basis that he is so poor that — unlike others — he has no other toys to play with and it would therefore mean a lot to him if the flute were given to him; and Carla says that it belongs to her because she has made it with her own labour.
The important thing to note here is that none of the claimants questions their rival’s argument but claims that his or hers is the most persuasive. So, who deserves the flute?
Should it go to the child for whom it represents the only source of entertainment as he has no other toys to play with? Or to the one who can actually make practical use of it; or to the child to whom it must belong by virtue of her ``right” to the fruits of her labour?
Read here
