Amartya Sen interview: India must fulfil Tagore’s vision, not Gandhi’s

Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. Sen’s previous books include: Development as Freedom; Rationality and Freedom; The Argumentative Indian; Identity and Violence, and The Idea of Justice. In 1998 Sen won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Much of the work done by the Indian economist has focused on poverty, specifically looking at developing new methods to predict and fight famines. His research also discusses ways to measure poverty, so that more effective social programs can be designed to prevent it. Sen has recently co-written a book with fellow economist, Jean Drèze, called An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions. It argues that, despite massive economic growth rates in India over the last three decades, there has been a lack of attention paid to other areas of Indian society: most notably, the inadequate use of public resources. They also point out a very obvious but salient point about India in 2013: hundreds of millions of its citizens are undernourished and living in extreme poverty.