Nalanda नालंदा
—  city  —
Ruins of Nalanda University
Nalanda
Coordinates: 25°08′12″N 85°26′38″E / 25.1367959°N 85.4438281°E / 25.1367959; 85.4438281Coordinates: 25°08′12″N 85°26′38″E / 25.1367959°N 85.4438281°E / 25.1367959; 85.4438281
Country	India
State	Bihar
District	Nalanda
Time zone	IST (UTC+5:30)
PIN	803115
Telephone code	916112
Vehicle registration	BR
Nearest city	Rajgir
Lok Sabha constituency	Nalanda
Vidhan Sabha constituency	Nalanda

Nālandā was an ancient center of higher learning in Bihar, India. The site of Nalanda is located in the Indian state of Bihar, about 88 kilometers south east of Patna, and was a Buddhist center of learning from the fifth or sixth century CE to 1197 CE.^[1][2] It has been called "one of the first great universities in recorded history".^[2] Nalanda flourished between the reign of the Śakrāditya (whose identity is uncertain and who might have been either Kumara Gupta I or Kumara Gupta II) and 1197 CE, supported by patronage from the Hindu Gupta rulers as well as Buddhist emperors like Harsha and later emperors from the Pala Empire.^[3]

The complex was built with red bricks and its ruins occupy an area of 14 hectares. At its peak, the university attracted scholars and students from as far away as Tibet, China, Greece, and Persia.^[4] Nalanda was ransacked and destroyed by Turkic Muslim invaders under Bakhtiyar Khilji in 1193.^[5] The great library of Nalanda University was so vast that it is reported to have burned for three months after the invaders set fire to it, ransacked and destroyed the monasteries, and drove the monks from the site. In 2006, Singapore, China, India, Japan, and other nations, announced a proposed plan to restore and revive the ancient site as Nalanda International University.

Etymology[link]

Nalanda means "insatiable in giving."^[4]

The Chinese pilgrim-monk Xuanzang^[6] gives several explanations of the name Nālandā. One is that it was named after the Nāga who lived in a tank in the middle of the mango grove. Another – the one he accepted – is that Shakyamuni Buddha once had his capital here and gave "alms without intermission", hence the name.

Sariputta died at the village called 'Nalaka,' which is also identified as Nalanda by many scholars.

History[link]

The seal of Nalanda University set in terracotta on display in the ASI Museum in Nalanda

History of the university and the Gupta heyday[link]

Some historical studies suggest that the University of Nalanda was established during the reign of a king called Śakrāditya.^[7] Both Xuanzang and Prajñavarman cite him as the founder, as does a seal discovered at the site.^[3]

As historian Sukumar Dutt describes it, the history of Nalanda university "falls into two main divisions—first, one of growth, development and fruition from the sixth century to the ninth, when it was dominated by the liberal cultural traditions inherited from the Gupta age; the second, one of gradual decline and final dissolution from the ninth century to the thirteen—a period when the tantric developments of Buddhism became most pronounced in eastern India."^[8]

Nalanda in the Pāla era[link]

A number of monasteries grew up during the Pāla period in ancient Bengal and Magadha. According to Tibetan sources, five great Mahaviharas stood out: Vikramashila, the premier university of the era; Nalanda, past its prime but still illustrious, Somapura, Odantapurā, and Jaggadala.^[9] The five monasteries formed a network; "all of them were under state supervision" and there existed "a system of co-ordination among them . . it seems from the evidence that the different seats of Buddhist learning that functioned in eastern India under the Pāla were regarded together as forming a network, an interlinked group of institutions," and it was common for great scholars to move easily from position to position among them.^[10]

During the Pālā period, the Nālānda was less singularly outstanding, as other Pāla establishments "must have drawn away a number of learned monks from Nālānda when all of them . . came under the aegis of the Pālās."^[8]

Decline and end[link]

In 1193, the Nalanda University was sacked by^[11] the fanatic Bakhtiyar Khilji, a Turk;^[12] this event is seen by scholars as a late milestone in the decline of Buddhism in India. The Persian historian Minhaj-i-Siraj, in his chronicle the Tabaqat-I-Nasiri, reported that thousands of monks were burned alive and thousands beheaded as Khilji tried his best to uproot Buddhism and plant Islam by the sword^[13] the burning of the library continued for several months and "smoke from the burning manuscripts hung for days like a dark pall over the low hills."^[14] However, the authenticity of these claims cannot be verified independently from other writings; it is not possible to identify one single source as the cause of the destruction. It is to be noted that, when Bakhtiyar Khilji defeated Lakshman Sen, Buddhism was already in decline in Bengal due to various reasons. Therefore, the exact time and the reason of decline and/or devastation of Nalanda University cannot be made certain at this time.

The last throne-holder of Nalanda, Shakyashribhadra, fled to Tibet in 1204 CE at the invitation of the Tibetan translator Tropu Lotsawa (Khro-phu Lo-tsa-ba Byams-pa dpal). In Tibet, he started an ordination lineage of the Mulasarvastivadin lineage to complement the two existing ones.

When the Tibetan translator Chag Lotsawa (Chag Lo-tsa-ba, 1197–1264) visited the site in 1235, he found it damaged and looted, with a 90-year-old teacher, Rahula Shribhadra, instructing a class of about 70 students.^[15][16] During Chag Lotsawa's time there an incursion by Turkish soldiers caused the remaining students to flee. Despite all this, "remnants of the debilitated Buddhist community continued to struggle on under scarce resources until c. 1400 CE when Chagalaraja was reportedly the last king to have patronized Nalanda."^[17]

Ahir considers the destruction of the temples, monasteries, centers of learning at Nalanda and northern India to be responsible for the demise of ancient Indian scientific thought in mathematics, astronomy, alchemy, and anatomy.^[18]

Overview[link]

Pilgrimage to Buddha's Holy Sites
The Four Main Sites
Lumbini · Bodh Gaya Sarnath · Kushinagar
Four Additional Sites
Sravasti · Rajgir Sankissa · Vaishali
Other Sites
Patna · Gaya · Kosambi Kapilavastu · Devadaha Kesariya · Pava Nalanda · Varanasi
Later Sites
Sanchi · Mathura Ellora · Ajanta · Vikramshila Ratnagiri · Udayagiri · Lalitgiri Bharhut · Barabar Caves
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Nalanda was one of the world's first residential universities, i.e., it had dormitories for students. It is also one of the most famous universities. In its heyday, it accommodated over 10,000 students and 2,000 teachers. The university was considered an architectural masterpiece, and was marked by a lofty wall and one gate. Nalanda had eight separate compounds and ten temples, along with many other meditation halls and classrooms. On the grounds were lakes and parks. The library was located in a nine storied building where meticulous copies of texts were produced. The subjects taught at Nalanda University covered every field of learning, and it attracted pupils and scholars from Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Persia and Turkey.^[2] During the period of Harsha, the monastery is reported to have owned 200 villages given as grants.

The Tang Dynasty Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang left detailed accounts of the university in the 7th century. He described how the regularly laid-out towers, forest of pavilions, harmikas and temples seemed to "soar above the mists in the sky" so that from their cells the monks "might witness the birth of the winds and clouds."^[19] The pilgrim states: "An azure pool winds around the monasteries, adorned with the full-blown cups of the blue lotus; the dazzling red flowers of the lovely kanaka hang here and there, and outside groves of mango trees offer the inhabitants their dense and protective shade."^[20]

The entrance of many of the viharas in the Nalanda University ruins can be seen with a bow marked floor; the bow was the royal sign of the Guptas.

Libraries[link]

The library of Nalanda, known as Dharma Gunj (Mountain of Truth) or Dharmagañja (Treasury of Truth), was the most renowned repository of Buddhist knowledge in the world at the time. Its collection was said to comprise hundreds of thousands of volumes, so extensive that it burned for approximately more than 6 months when set aflame by Turkish invaders. The library had three main buildings as high as nine stories tall, Ratnasagara (Sea of Jewels), Ratnodadhi (Ocean of Jewels), and Ratnarañjaka (Delighter of Jewels).^[21][22]

Curriculum[link]

The Tibetan tradition holds that there were "four doxographies" (Tibetan: grub-mtha’) which were taught at Nālandā, and Alexander Berzin specifies these as:^[23]

1. Sarvāstivāda Vaibhāṣika
2. Sarvāstivāda Sautrāntika
3. Mādhyamaka, the Mahāyāna philosophy of Nāgārjuna
4. Cittamatra, the Mahāyāna philosophy of Asaṅga and Vasubandhu

According to an unattributed article of the Dharma Fellowship (2005), the curriculum of Nalanda University at the time of Mañjuśrīmitra contained:

...virtually the entire range of world knowledge then available. Courses were drawn from every field of learning, Buddhist and Hindu, sacred and secular, foreign and native. Students studied science, astronomy, medicine, and logic as diligently as they applied themselves to metaphysics, philosophy, Samkhya, Yoga-shastra, the Veda, and the scriptures of Buddhism. They studied foreign philosophy likewise.

In the 7th century, Xuanzang records the number of teachers at Nālandā as being around 1510.^[24] Of these, approximately 1000 were able to explain 20 collections of sūtras and śāstras, 500 were able to explain 30 collections, and only 10 teachers were able to explain 50 collections.^[24] Xuanzang was among the few who were able to explain 50 collections or more.^[24] At this time, only the abbot Śīlabhadra had studied all the major collections of sūtras and śāstras at Nālandā.^[24]

Yijing wrote that matters of discussion and administration at Nālandā would require assembly and consensus on decisions by all those at the assembly, as well as resident monks:^[25]

If the monks had some business, they would assemble to discuss the matter. Then they ordered the officer, Vihārapāla, to circulate and report the matter to the resident monks one by one with folded hands. With the objection of a single monk, it would not pass. There was no use of beating or thumping to announce his case. In case a monk did something without consent of all the residents, he would be forced to leave the monastery. If there was a difference of opinion on a certain issue, they would give reason to convince (the other group). No force or coercion was used to convince.

Xuanzang also writes: "The lives of all these virtuous men were naturally governed by habits of the most solemn and strictest kind. Thus in the seven hundred years of the monastery's existence no man has ever contravened the rules of the discipline. The king showers it with the signs of his respect and veneration and has assigned the revenue from a hundred cities to pay for the maintenance of the religious."^[20]

Influence on Buddhism[link]

A vast amount of what came to comprise Tibetan Buddhism, both its Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions, stems from the late (9th–12th century) Nalanda teachers and traditions. The scholar Dharmakirti (ca. 7th century), one of the Buddhist founders of Indian philosophical logic, as well as and one of the primary theorists of Buddhist atomism, taught at Nalanda.

Other forms of Buddhism, such as the Mahāyāna Buddhism followed in Vietnam, China, Korea and Japan, flourished within the walls of the ancient university. A number of scholars have associated some Mahāyāna texts such as the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, an important sūtra in East Asian Buddhism, with the Buddhist tradition at Nālandā.^[26][27] Ron Epstein also notes that the general doctrinal position of the sūtra does indeed correspond to what is known about the Buddhist teachings at Nālandā toward the end of the Gupta period when it was translated.^[28]

According to Hwui-Li, a Chinese visitor, Nālandā was held in contempt by some Sthaviras for its emphasis on Mahayana philosophy. They reportedly chided King Harṣa for patronizing Nalanda during one of his visits to Orissa, mocking the "sky-flower" philosophy taught there and suggesting that he might as well patronize a Kapalika temple.^[29] When this occurred, Harṣa notified the chancellor of Nālandā, who sent the monks Sāgaramati, Prajñāraśmi, Siṃharaśmi, and Xuanzang to refute the views of the monks from Orissa.^[30]

Ruins[link]

A number of ruined structures survive. Nearby is the Surya Mandir, a Hindu temple. The known and excavated ruins extend over an area of about 150,000 square metres, although if Xuanzang's account of Nalanda's extent is correlated with present excavations, almost 90% of it remains unexcavated. Nālandā is no longer inhabited. Today the nearest habitation is a village called Bargaon.

In 1951, a modern centre for Pali (Theravadin) Buddhist studies was founded nearby by Bhikshu Jagdish Kashyap, the Nava Nalanda Mahavihara. Presently, this institute is pursuing an ambitious program of satellite imaging of the entire region.

The Nalanda Museum contains a number of manuscripts, and shows many examples of the items that have been excavated. India's first Multimedia Museum was opened on 26 January 2008, which recreates the history of Nalanda using a 3D animation film narrated by Shekhar Suman. Besides this there are four more sections in the Multimedia Museum: Geographical Perspective, Historical Perspective, Hall of Nalanda and Revival of Nalanda.

Plans for revival[link]

• On 9 December 2006, the New York Times detailed a plan in the works to spend $1 billion to revive Nalanda University near the ancient site. A consortium led by Singapore and including China, India, Japan and other nations will attempt to raise $500 million to build a new university and another $500 million to develop necessary infrastructure.^[2]

• On 28 May 2007, Merinews reported that the revived university's enrollment will be 1,137 in its first year, and 4,530 by the fifth. In the 'second phase', enrollment will reach 5,812.^[31]

• On 12 June 2007, News Post India reported that the Japanese diplomat Noro Motoyasu said that "Japan will fund the setting up an international university in Nalanda in Bihar". The report goes on to say that "The proposed university will be fully residential, like the ancient seat of learning at Nalanda. In the first phase of the project, seven schools with 46 foreign faculty members and over 400 Indian academics would come up." ... "The university will impart courses in science, philosophy and spiritualism along with other subjects. A renowned international scholar will be its chancellor."^[32]

• On 15 August 2007, The Times of India reported that Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has accepted the offer to join the revived Nalanda International University sometime in September 2007."^[33]

• NDTV reported on 5 May 2008 that, according to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, the foundation of University would likely be in the year 2009 and the first teaching class could begin in a few years from then. Sen, who heads the Nalanda Mentor Group, said the final report in this regard, is expected to be presented to the East Asia Summit in December 2008.

• On 11 May 2008, The Times of India reported that host nation India and a consortium of East Asian countries met in New York to further discuss Nalanda plans. It was decided that Nalanda would largely be a post-graduate research university, with the following schools: School of Buddhist studies, philosophy, and comparative religion; School of historical studies; School of International Relations and Peace; School of Business Management and Development; School of Languages and Literature; and, School of Ecology and Environmental Studies. The objective of the school was claimed to be "aimed at advancing the concept of an Asian community...and rediscovering old relationships."^[34]

• On 13 September 2010, the Jakarta Globe Reported Parliament in New Delhi passed a bill approving plans to rebuild the campus as a symbol of India’s global ambitions.^[35]

Institutions[link]

University

• Nav Nalanda Mahavihara

College

• Nalanda College, Biharsharif
• Maha Bodhi College

School

• Nalanda Collegiate School
• Adarsh High School
• Ras Bihari High School
• Nerut High School
• Nalanda Heritage School
• samarpan coaching

Railway Station[link]

• Nalanda

In popular culture[link]

• 1970: Hindi movie Johny Mera Naam uses the location of Nalanda ruins for its climactic song.

Gallery[link]

• 

  As they stood, before the Nālandā University was excavated.

• 

  The Sariputta Stupa

• 

  Back side view of Sariputta Stupa

• 

  Front view of Sariputta Stupa

• 

  Temple and votive stūpas.

• 

  Interior of the Nālandā ruins.

• 

  Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva statue from Nālandā, 9th century CE.

• 

  Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva statue. Nālandā, 11th century CE.

• 

  The Buddha teaching at Deer Park, Vārāṇasī. Nālandā.

• 

  Buddha descending from Trāyastriṃśa Heaven. Nālandā.

• 

  Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva on his lion. Nālandā.

• 

  Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva. Nālandā.

See also[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Behl, Benoy K. (2008-03-01). "Art: Thoughts and Images (15 of 25)". Frontline 25 (5). http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2505/stories/20080314250506600.htm. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Nalanda

• World Heritage
• Nalanda travel guide from Wikitravel
• Entry on Nalanda in the Buddhist Dictionary of Pali Proper Names
• An Ancient Glory Rises
• Manuscript originally from Nalanda
• Nava Nalanda Mahavihara, Bihar State, India
• Villages linked to Nalanda located
• Nalanda District Official website

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (March 2012)

Amartya Sen

Official Portrait at the Nobel Prize
Born	(1933-11-03) 3 November 1933 (age 78) Santiniketan, Bengal Presidency, British India (present-day West Bengal, India)
Nationality	Indian
Institution	Harvard University University of Cambridge Jadavpur University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cornell University University of Oxford Delhi School of Economics University of Calcutta London School of Economics University of California, Berkeley Stanford University
Field	Welfare economics, ethics
Alma mater	Presidency College of the University of Calcutta (B.A.) Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A., M.A., Ph.D.)
Influences	B. R. Ambedkar John Maynard Keynes John Rawls Peter Bauer John Stuart Mill Kenneth Arrow Piero Sraffa
Influenced	Mahbub ul Haq Kaushik Basu Jean Drèze
Contributions	Human development theory
Awards	Nobel Prize in Economics (1998) Bharat Ratna (1999) National Humanities Medal (2012)[1]
Information at IDEAS/RePEc

Amartya Sen, CH (Bengali: অমর্ত্য সেন, translit. Ômorto Shen; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members. Sen is best known for his work on the causes of famine, which led to the development of practical solutions for preventing or limiting the effects of real or perceived shortages of food.^[2] He helped to create the United Nations Human Development Index.^[2] In 2012, he became the first non-American recipient of the National Humanities Medal.^[3]

He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is also a senior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, distinguished fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he previously served as Master from 1998 to 2004.^[4][5] He is the first Indian and the first Asian academic to head an Oxbridge college.

Amartya Sen's books have been translated into more than thirty languages over a period of forty years. He is a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security. In 2006, Time magazine listed him under "60 years of Asian Heroes"^[6] and in 2010 included him in their "100 most influential persons in the world".^[7] New Statesman listed him in their 2010 edition of 'World's 50 Most Influential People Who Matter'.^[8]

Early life and education[link]

Sen was born to a Bengali Hindu Vaidya-Brahmin family of Santiniketan, West Bengal, India. His ancestral home was in Wari, Dhaka, then part of India; now Bangladesh which became a new country in 1971 following its separation from Pakistan which, in turn, was earlier formed as a result of the partition of British India in 1947. Rabindranath Tagore is said to have given Amartya Sen his name ("Amartya" meaning "immortal"). Sen hails from a distinguished family: his maternal grandfather Acharya Kshiti Mohan Sen, a close associate of Rabindranath Tagore, was a renowned scholar of medieval Indian literature, an authority on the philosophy of Hinduism, and also the second Vice Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University. His maternal grandfather was an uncle of Sukumar Sen, ICS the First-Chief Election Commissioner of India and his equally distinguished brothers, Amiya Sen, a very well known doctor, and Barrister Ashoke Kumar Sen, M.P. and a former Union Cabinet Minister for Law and Justice of India. Sen's father Professor Ashutosh Sen and mother Amita Sen were both born in Manikganj, Dhaka. His father was a Professor of Chemistry at Dhaka University and later served for several years in Delhi, becoming the Chairman of the West Bengal Public Service Commission.

Sen began his high-school education at St Gregory's School in Dhaka in 1941, in modern-day Bangladesh. His family came to India following the partition of the country in 1947. In India Sen studied at the Visva-Bharati University school and then at the Presidency College, Kolkata, where he earned a First Class First in his B.A. (Honours) in Economics as a graduating student of the University of Calcutta, and emerged as the most eminent student of the well known batch of 1953. Subsequently, in the same year, he moved to Trinity College, Cambridge. There he earned a First Class (Starred First) BA (Honours) in 1956. He was elected as the President of the Cambridge Majlis in the same year. While still an undergraduate student of Trinity, he met Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. Mahalanobis, who was much impressed with Sen, returned to Calcutta and immediately recommended the brilliant Cambridge undergraduate to Triguna Sen, the then Education Minister of West Bengal, who had been instrumental in turning the National Council into the new Jadavpur University.

After Sen had completed his Tripos examination and had enrolled for a Ph.D. in Economics to be completed at Trinity College, Cambridge, he returned to India on a two year leave. Triguna Sen immediately appointed him as Professor and the Founder-Head of Department of Economics at Jadavpur University, Calcutta, which was his very first appointment, at the age of 23. This still remains the youngest age at which anybody has been appointed to a professorship or a head of departmentship in India. During his tenure at Jadavpur University, Sen had the good fortune of having economic methodologist, A. K. Dasgupta, who was then teaching at the renowned Benares Hindu University, as his supervisor. After two full years of full time teaching in Jadavpur, Sen returned to Cambridge to complete his Ph.D. in 1959, which was immediately acclaimed as a pathbreaking work.

Subsequently, Sen won a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College, which gave him four years of freedom to do anything he liked, during which period he took the radical decision of studying philosophy. That proved to be of immense help to his later research. Sen related the importance of studying philosophy thus: "The broadening of my studies into philosophy was important for me not just because some of my main areas of interest in economics relate quite closely to philosophical disciplines (for example, social choice theory makes intense use of mathematical logic and also draws on moral philosophy, and so does the study of inequality and deprivation), but also because I found philosophical studies very rewarding on their own."^[9] However, his deep interest in philosophy can be dated back to his college days in Presidency, when he both read books on philosophy and debated philosophical themes.

To Sen, then Cambridge was like a battlefield. There were major debates between supporters of Keynesian economics and the diverse contributions of Keynes' followers, on the one hand, and the "neo-classical" economists skeptical of Keynes, on the other. Sen was lucky to have close relations with economists on both sides of the divide. Meanwhile, thanks to its good "practice" of democratic and tolerant social choice, Sen's own college, Trinity College, was an oasis very much removed from the discord. However, because of a lack of enthusiasm for social choice theory whether in Trinity or Cambridge, Sen had to choose a quite different subject for his Ph.D. thesis, after completing his B.A. He submitted his thesis on "the choice of techniques" in 1959 under the supervision of the "brilliant but vigorously intolerant" neo-Keynesian, Joan Robinson.^[10] According to Quentin Skinner, Sen was a member of the secret society Cambridge Apostles during his time at Cambridge.^[11]

Professorships[link]

Between 1960–1961, Amartya was a visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[12] He was also a visiting Professor at UC-Berkeley, Stanford, and Cornell.

He has taught economics also at the University of Calcutta and at the Delhi School of Economics (where he completed his magnum opus Collective Choice and Social Welfare in 1970),^[13] where he was a Professor from 1961 to 1972, a period which is considered to be a Golden Period in the history of DSE. In 1972 he joined the London School of Economics as a Professor of Economics where he taught until 1977. From 1977 to 1986 he taught at the University of Oxford, where he was first a Professor of Economics at Nuffield College, Oxford and then the Drummond Professor of Political Economy and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. In 1986 he joined Harvard as the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor of Economics. In 1998 he was appointed as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.^[14] In January 2004 Sen returned to Harvard. He is also a contributor to the Eva Colorni Trust at the former London Guildhall University.

Membership and Associations[link]

He has served as Presidents of the Econometric Society (1984), the International Economic Association (1986–1989), the Indian Economic Association (1989) and the American Economic Association (1994). He has also served as President of the Development Studies Association (1980–1982) and is a Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Economic Society, which he has been since 1988.

He presently serves as Honorary Director of Center for Human and Economic Development Studies at Peking University in China^[15] and is also a board council member of the Prime Minister of India's Global Advisory Council of Overseas Indians.^[16]

Research[link]

Sen's papers in the late 1960s and early 1970s helped develop the theory of social choice, which first came to prominence in the work by the American economist Kenneth Arrow, who, while working at the RAND Corporation, had most famously showed that all voting rules, be they majority rule or two thirds-majority or status quo, must inevitably conflict with some basic democratic norm. Sen's contribution to the literature was to show under what conditions Arrow's impossibility theorem would indeed come to pass as well as to extend and enrich the theory of social choice, informed by his interests in history of economic thought and philosophy.

In 1981, Sen published Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981), a book in which he demonstrated that famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food. Sen also demonstrated that the Bengal famine was caused by an urban economic boom that raised food prices, thereby causing millions of rural workers to starve to death when their wages did not keep up.^[17] Sen's interest in famine stemmed from personal experience. As a nine-year-old boy, he witnessed the Bengal famine of 1943, in which three million people perished. This staggering loss of life was unnecessary, Sen later concluded. He presents data that there was an adequate food supply in Bengal at the time, but particular groups of people including rural landless labourers and urban service providers like haircutters did not have the monetary means to acquire food as its price rose rapidly due to factors that include British military acquisition, panic buying, hoarding, and price gouging, all connected to the war in the region. In Poverty and Famines, Sen revealed that in many cases of famine, food supplies were not significantly reduced. In Bengal, for example, food production, while down on the previous year, was higher than in previous non-famine years. Thus, Sen points to a number of social and economic factors, such as declining wages, unemployment, rising food prices, and poor food-distribution systems. These issues led to starvation among certain groups in society. His capabilities approach focuses on positive freedom, a person's actual ability to be or do something, rather than on negative freedom approaches, which are common in economics and simply focuses on non-interference. In the Bengal famine, rural laborers' negative freedom to buy food was not affected. However, they still starved because they were not positively free to do anything, they did not have the functioning of nourishment, nor the capability to escape morbidity.

In addition to his important work on the causes of famines, Sen's work in the field of development economics has had considerable influence in the formulation of the Human Development Report, published by the United Nations Development Programme.^[18] This annual publication that ranks countries on a variety of economic and social indicators owes much to the contributions by Sen among other social choice theorists in the area of economic measurement of poverty and inequality.

Sen's revolutionary contribution to development economics and social indicators is the concept of 'capability' developed in his article "Equality of What." He argues that governments should be measured against the concrete capabilities of their citizens. This is because top-down development will always trump human rights as long as the definition of terms remains in doubt (is a 'right' something that must be provided or something that simply cannot be taken away?). For instance, in the United States citizens have a hypothetical "right" to vote. To Sen, this concept is fairly empty. In order for citizens to have a capacity to vote, they first must have "functionings." These "functionings" can range from the very broad, such as the availability of education, to the very specific, such as transportation to the polls. Only when such barriers are removed can the citizen truly be said to act out of personal choice. It is up to the individual society to make the list of minimum capabilities guaranteed by that society. For an example of the "capabilities approach" in practice, see Martha Nussbaum's Women and Human Development.

He wrote a controversial article in The New York Review of Books entitled "More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing" (see Missing women of Asia), analyzing the mortality impact of unequal rights between the genders in the developing world, particularly Asia. Other studies, such as one by Emily Oster, have argued that this is an overestimation, though Oster has recanted some of her conclusions.^[19]

Welfare economics seeks to evaluate economic policies in terms of their effects on the well-being of the community. Sen, who devoted his career to such issues, was called the "conscience of his profession." His influential monograph Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970), which addressed problems related to individual rights (including formulation of the liberal paradox), justice and equity, majority rule, and the availability of information about individual conditions, inspired researchers to turn their attention to issues of basic welfare. Sen devised methods of measuring poverty that yielded useful information for improving economic conditions for the poor. For instance, his theoretical work on inequality provided an explanation for why there are fewer women than men in India and China despite the fact that in the West and in poor but medically unbiased countries, women have lower mortality rates at all ages, live longer, and make a slight majority of the population. Sen claimed that this skewed ratio results from the better health treatment and childhood opportunities afforded boys in those countries, as well as sex-specific abortion.

Governments and international organizations handling food crises were influenced by Sen's work. His views encouraged policy makers to pay attention not only to alleviating immediate suffering but also to finding ways to replace the lost income of the poor, as, for example, through public-works projects, and to maintain stable prices for food. A vigorous defender of political freedom, Sen believed that famines do not occur in functioning democracies because their leaders must be more responsive to the demands of the citizens. In order for economic growth to be achieved, he argued, social reforms, such as improvements in education and public health, must precede economic reform.

Perceptions: In comparisons[link]

Amartya has been called "the Conscience and the Mother Teresa of Economics"^[2][20] for his work on famine, human development theory, welfare economics, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, gender inequality, and political liberalism. However, he denies the comparison to Mother Teresa by saying that he has never tried to follow a lifestyle of dedicated self-sacrifice.^[21]

India: University mentor for growth and revival[link]

Nalanda International University Project[link]

In May 2007, he was appointed by the Government of India as chairman^[22] of Nalanda Mentor Group to examine the framework of international cooperation, and proposed structure of partnership, which would govern the establishment of Nalanda International University Project as an international centre of education seeking to revive the ancient center of higher learning which was present in India from the 5th century to 1197.

Presidency College, Kolkata[link]

In June 2011, he was appointed as the adviser to the Mentor Group of Presidency College by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.^[23][24]

Media and Popular Culture[link]

Film[link]

A 56 minute documentary named "Amartya Sen: A Life Re-examined" directed by Suman Ghosh details his life and work.^[25][26]

Personal life and beliefs[link]

Sen's first wife was Nabaneeta Dev Sen, an Indian writer and scholar, with whom he had two children: Antara, a journalist and publisher, and Nandana, a Bollywood actress. Their marriage broke up shortly after they moved to London in 1971.^[2] In 1973, he married his second wife, Eva Colorni, who was Jewish,^[27] who died from stomach cancer in 1985.^[2] They had two children, Indrani, a journalist in New York, and Kabir, who teaches music at Shady Hill School.

Sen married Emma Georgina Rothschild in 1991. Sen usually spends his winter holidays at his home in Santiniketan in West Bengal, India, where he likes to go on long bike rides, and maintains a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he and Emma spend the spring and long vacations. Asked how he relaxes, he replies: "I read a lot and like arguing with people."^[28]

Sen is a self-proclaimed agnostic and holds that this can be associated with Hinduism as a political entity.^{[29][30][31][32]} In an interview for the magazine California, which is published by the University of California, Berkeley, he noted^[33]:

Academic achievements, awards and honors[link]

Sen has received many honorary degrees (over 90)^[34] from universities around the world, including from the following:

• 1981; He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[35]
• 1982: He was awarded honorary fellowship by the Institute of Social Studies.
• 1998: He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in welfare economics.
• 1999: He received the Bharat Ratna 'the highest civilian award in India' by the President of India.
• 1999: He was offered the honorary citizenship of Bangladesh by Sheikh Hasina in recognition of his achievements in winning the Nobel Prize, and given that his ancestral origins were in what has become the modern state of Bangladesh
• 2000: He was awarded the order of Companion of Honour, UK.
• 2000: He received Leontief Prize for his outstanding contribution to economic theory from the Global Development and Environment Institute.
• 2000: He was awarded the Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service USA;
• 2000: He was the 351st Commencement Speaker of Harvard University.
• 2002: He received the International Humanist Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union.
• 2003: He was conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Indian Chamber of Commerce^[which?].
• He is awarded the Life Time Achievement award by Bangkok-based United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP)
• 2010: He was chosen to deliver the Demos Annual Lecture 2010
• 2011: The National Humanities Medal will be given to Amartya Sen by US Govt.

Publications[link]

• Choice of Techniques, 1960.
• Sen, Amartya, An Aspect of Indian Agriculture, Economic Weekly, Vol. 14, 1962.
• Collective Choice and Social Welfare, 1970, Holden-Day, 1984, Elsevier. Description.
• Sen, Amartya, On Economic Inequality, New York, Norton, 1973. (Expanded edition with a substantial annexe by James E. Foster and A. Sen, 1997).
• On Economic Inequality, 1973.
• Poverty and Famines: an Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, 1981a.
• Sen, Amartya, Poverty and Famines : An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982a.
• Sen, Amartya K., Choice, Welfare and Measurement, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982b. Description and scroll to chapter-preview links.
• Sen, Amartya, Food Economics and Entitlements, Helsinki, Wider Working Paper 1, 1986.
• Sen, Amartya, On Ethics and Economics, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1987. Scroll to chapter-preview links.