A beautiful mind

In Home in the World, Amartya Sen, a dear friend and contemporary, has achieved the impossible. We are with him in Shantiniketan, savouring its unique ambience. Tagore is there, and encourages our brave Amartya to improve his competence in Sanskrit. At another time he is cycling from Shantiniketan to old farm sheds and warehouses in neighbouring villages, transporting a weighing machine to weigh boys and girls up to the age of five, to collect data related to the Bengal famine of 1943. We then follow Amartya at the age of 19, sailing to the UK, filled with wonderment at the endless ocean he sees around him. Then the great leap forward as he explores, debates and redefines the various elements that makeup economics—ethics, politics, statistics.

- DEVAKI JAIN

From Aristotle to Wittgenstein to Gautama Buddha. He is forever curious, interested, amazed and intrigued by the phenomena that he observes or reads about. Moving from ancient texts to contemporary ones and engaging with some of what captivates him. He then pursues an explanation and an exposition of these for the rest of his life.

Injustice between men and women in all the dimensions of life, especially amongst the less privileged, bothers him. Addressing the woman issue—or the gender issue, as it is called now—has been a recurring theme in Amartya’s work over the decades. While he does not spend much time on this issue in Home in the World, he provided many concepts and ideas which many of us took forward in our work. We tried to redress the inequality between men and women—a pervasive phenomenon worldwide. In one of the first essays he wrote on women—Indian Women: Wellbeing and Survival—in The Economic Journal, to my great joy, he added a footnote acknowledging Pranab Bardhan and me for pointing out this issue.

ADDRESSING THE GENDER ISSUE HAS BEEN A RECURRING THEME IN AMARTYA’S WORK.