Interview: PBS Interviews Nobel laureate Prof.Amartya Sen of Cambridge.
Ratan:
Good morning:
I happened to watch Prof.Sen last night on News Hour (PBS),did you'll see it. Here is the transcprit.
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THE ECONOMICS OF POVERTY
October 15, 1998
Cambridge Professor Amartya Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on welfare economics and the causes of famine. He discusses the economics of poverty with Phil Ponce.
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PHIL PONCE: Professor, one of the specific issues that the Nobel citation talks about is your interest in understanding famine, and it says that your best-known work has to do with understanding that famine isn't just caused by a shortage of food but by other things like unemployment, drop in income. Why the specific interest in famine?
AMARTYA SEN: Well, there are many reasons, of course, because famines are unfortunately still a real phenomenon in the world. And lots of people die from it, systematically, in different parts of the world, but in my case the personal interest arose also from the fact that I happen to observe from inside a major famine of the 20th century - the Bengal famine, which occurred in Indian in 1943 - in fact, the last famine that occurred in India,.......
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PHIL PONCE: According to a report that I read, you personally, when you were a boy, personally fed people who were starving refugees
AMARTYA SEN: Well, my parents - you know - since we relatively prosperous, still not rich, lower middle class family -still not rich -- a lower middle class family - but quite committed on social matters and come from an academic background. My father was a professor; my grandfather was a professor - we were quite involved in that so I was committed to give anyone who asked for food, a tin, a cigarette tin of rice. But since there are many people asking, I was also told that that's what I could give to anyone. I obviously felt very moral in trying to give as much as I could. And it's a very harrowing experience. Obviously, this didn't do anything to solve the famine, but it's a question that got even more strongly engrained in my mind because of the small participation that I happened to do in this context.
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