Quote

If the government is vulnerable to public opinion, then famines are a dreadfully bad thing to have. You can’t win many elections after a famine, and you don’t like being criticized by newspapers, opposition parties in parliament, and so on. Democracy gives the government an immediate political incentive to act.

Amartya Sen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Amartya Sen
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: November 3
Economist
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Shantiniketan
Amartya Kumar Sen
Professor Amartya Kumar Sen
Party
Newspapers
Criticized
Political
Vulnerable
Famine
Government
Election
Incentives
Many
Gives
Elections
Giving
Democracy
Parliament
Thing
Opinion
Immediate
Famines
Like
Public
Parties
Dreadfully
Winning
Opposition
Incentive

More quotes by Amartya Sen

Image
Even in areas like the most depressed region of India in terms of female education, namely Rajasthan, which has [one of] the lowest female literacy [rates] in India. Even there, 80 to 90 percent of the parents would like their girls to go to school. And indeed, about 80 percent would like them to be made compulsory.
Amartya Sen
Image
I think one big thing about the United States is that the American population, they may be excited about Iraq or one thing or another, but basically has had a great deal of interest in humanitarian causes both within the country and abroad. Even when they criticize the mechanism to which it flows.
Amartya Sen
Image
[Globalization] has enriched the world scientifically and culturally and benefited many people economically as well.
Amartya Sen
Image
I believe that virtually all the problems in the world come from inequality of one kind or another.
Amartya Sen
Image
I think the whole progress over the last two or three millennia has been entirely dependent on ideas and techniques and commodities and people moving from one part of the world to another. It seems difficult to take an anti-globalization view if one takes globalization properly in its full sense.
Amartya Sen
Image
Across the world, in Africa, Asia, Latin America, everywhere, there is a widespread recognition on the part of the parents, too, that the children's life will go much better by being educated. And that applies to girls as well as boys.
Amartya Sen
Image
Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means.
Amartya Sen
Image
We might have reason to be driven! We live for a short stretch of time in a world we share with others. Virtually everything we do is dependent on others, from the arts and culture to farmers who grow the food we eat.
Amartya Sen
Image
Human ordeals thrive on ignorance. To understand a problem with clarity is already half way towards solving it.
Amartya Sen
Image
To say that certainly America was very lucky to get a large amount of land, and the native Indians were extremely unlucky to have white men coming over here, is one thing. But to say that the whole of the American prosperity was based on exploiting the indigenous population would be a great mistake.
Amartya Sen
Image
I was told Indian women don't think like that about equality. But I would like to argue that if they don't think like that they should be given a real opportunity to think like that.
Amartya Sen
Image
Globalization is a complex issue, partly because economic globalization is only one part of it. Globalization is greater global closeness, and that is cultural, social, political, as well as economic.
Amartya Sen
Image
I don’t think that India is much celebrated for its democracy. Democracy has been a very neglected commodity at home and abroad.
Amartya Sen
Image
Anything that increases the voice of young women tends therefore to reduce the fertility rate.
Amartya Sen
Image
Nearly everywhere Buddhism went, there had been a higher level of literacy, even in miserable Burma, not to mention Thailand and Sri Lanka.
Amartya Sen
Image
We live in a world where there is a need for pluralistic institutions and for recognizing different types of freedom, economic, social, cultural, and political, which are interrelated.
Amartya Sen
Image
Resenting the obtuseness of others is not good ground for shooting oneself in the foot.
Amartya Sen
Image
I'’m generally in favor of economic globalization. Having said that, it doesn’t always work and does not immediately work in the interest of all. There are sufferers.
Amartya Sen
Image
Economic growth without investment in human development is unsustainable - and unethical.
Amartya Sen
Image
The student community of Presidency College was also politically most active.
Amartya Sen