I dont think that India is much celebrated for its democracy. Democracy has been a very neglected commodity at home and abroad. Amartya Sen More Quotes by Amartya Sen More Quotes From Amartya Sen [N]o democracy with a free press has ever experienced a major famine. Amartya Sen free-press famine democracy But the idea that I should be a teacher and a researcher of some sort did not vary over the years. Amartya Sen teacher years ideas The anti-globalization movement is one of the biggest globalized events of the contemporary world, people coming from everywhere, Australia, Indonesia, Britain, India, Poland, Germany, South Africato demonstrate in Seattle or Quebec. What could be more global than that? Amartya Sen australia india people Human life consists of doing certain things ... to take part in the life of the community; to be able to talk about subjects that interest me and there freedom of speech comes into it. Amartya Sen freedom-of-speech able community There's no reason why one need not look at the content of education just as one is expanding the availability of school, because it doesn't cost more money to get them [a] better education. It requires better textbooks, it requires a vision, it requires a determination, but it's not very expensive to do that anyway. Amartya Sen availability determination school 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 political different needs I left Delhi, in 1971, shortly after Collective Choice and Social Welfare was published in 1970. Amartya Sen welfare-programs choices social I was born in a University campus and seem to have lived all my life in one campus or another. Amartya Sen university campus born In all kinds of ways there are different freedoms that effect our lives and you can assess what our lives are like by looking at the various freedoms that we have. Amartya Sen different kind way From the mid-1970s, I also started work on the causation and prevention of famines. Amartya Sen causation famine prevention You cant prevent undernourishment so easily, but famines you can stop with half an effort. Then the question was why dont the governments stop them? Amartya Sen effort government half If the government is vulnerable to public opinion, then famines are a dreadfully bad thing to have. You cant win many elections after a famine, and you dont like being criticized by newspapers, opposition parties in parliament, and so on. Democracy gives the government an immediate political incentive to act. Amartya Sen party government winning If the knowledge of torture of others makes you sick, it is a case of sympathy... It can be argued that behaviour based on sympathy is in an important sense egoistic, for one is oneself pleased at others' pleasure and pained at others' pain, and the pursuit of one's own utility may thus be helped by sympathetic action. Amartya Sen pain sick religion It is also very engaging - and a delight - to go back to Bangladesh as often as I can, which is not only my old home, but also where some of my closest friends and collaborators live and work. Amartya Sen bangladesh delight home I think in those countries, including my own in India, where I think primary education has been badly neglected by successive governments, I blame the opposition as much. Why have they allowed the government to get away with it? Amartya Sen government country thinking [To organize a school] looks much more difficult in theory than it does in practice. Amartya Sen practice doe school 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 girl parent school Women had always been thought of as looking after the family when men go and earn an income and they're the bread earner and so on. So there is a kind of generation of inequality, [and], on top of the fact, women have pregnancies and periods, [and] when the children are very small, there are greater demands on their time. So one way or another women have had a pretty rough deal in the past, and there's no reason why that should continue, and any country that has tried to remedy that has succeeded in doing so. Amartya Sen pregnancy country children Capability is just a concept of what is it we're looking at. Now how far we can go along that and what new capabilities become possible is something we have to judge. Amartya Sen concepts capability judging Every time you have an opportunity of opening a school, its fee and funding is really relatively small in comparison with the big expenditure, which is basically quote unquote defense. I think if there were fees, progress could be very much faster. But for that we need not only the government in different countries to understand it but the society to put pressure on it, the parents to understand that their desire to have their children educated can actually be realized, and it could make a dramatic difference. Amartya Sen country children school
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