Background Image

...

Poverty Is Not Just A Lack Of Money; It Is Not Having The Capability To Realize One's Full Potential As A Human Being

-Amartya Sen

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Poverty Is Not Just

Amartya Sen

...

Poverty Is Not Just A Lack Of Money; It Is Not Having The Capability To Realize One's Full Potential As A Human Being

Views: 7

Topic

More From Amartya Sen

Poverty Is The Deprivation Of Opportunity.

If Jobs Are Important, Education Is Important.

Education Is Important

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.

If You're Dealing With Grappling [with] Problems Of Feeding People, The Biggest Impact In Fertility Reduction Is Girls' Schools. Schooled Girls Make A Bigger Impact On That Than Any Other Factor - Not These Various Regulations [such As] You Have To Have One Child Or That. It Turns Out That None Of These Are Effective.

Women's Education Has A Much Greater Impact [on], For Example, Fertility. Men's Education, If Our Studies Are Correct, Ha[s] Almost No Impact On Fertility. Women's Do. So, By The Way, As A Man, It's Not To The Glory Of Men Specifically That It's Women's Education That Reduces Child Mortality.

Ultimately, Imperialism Made Even The British Working Classes Suffer. This Is A Point Which The British Working Classes Found Quite Difficult To Swallow, But They Did, Actually.

You Have To Be Interested In Inequality. The Issue Of Inequality And That Of Poverty Are Not Separable.

Nearly Everywhere Buddhism Went, There Had Been A Higher Level Of Literacy, Even In Miserable Burma, Not To Mention Thailand And Sri Lanka.

The Opportunities, Income, Schools Facilities, The Basic Income Support That The Government Provides Or Any Of These Things .. Public Transport Arrangements We Have.. All These Are Part Of The Way Our Lives And Freedoms Are Effected.

I Think Education Has A Bigger Impact On The Lives Of People Than Absolutely Anything Else.

Education Can Really Transform The Insecurities In The World Into A Bigger Vision Of What We Are As Human Beings.

I Don't Think Poverty Provides That Much Of An Obstacle To Education As One Thinks. I Think The Bigger Obstacle To Education Is The Fact That It's A Very Hard Thing To Do For A First-generation Schoolgoer. Because Not To Have Parents At Home Who Can Help You, Motivate You, Is A Problem Even When The Parents Are In The Abstract Very Keen On Children Being Educated.

I Think The Un's Role - Especially Since It's Not An Extremely Rich Fund, And That's To Put It Mildly - Is Mainly To Act As A Leading Thinker Of The World In Terms Of How To Think About The Future.

Opponents Of Globalisation May See It As A New Folly, But It Is Neither Particularly New, Nor, In General, A Folly.

Poverty Is Not Just A Lack Of Money; It Is Not Having The Capability To Realize One's Full Potential As A Human Being

Sometimes The Lack Of Substantive Freedoms Relates Directly To Economic Poverty, Which Robs People Of The Freedom To Satisfy Hunger; Or To Achieve Sufficient Nutrition, Or To Obtain Remedies For Treatable Illnesses Or The Opportunity To Be Adequatley Clothed Or Sheltered, Or To Enjoy Clean Water Or Sanitary Facilities.

I Was Born In A University Campus And Seem To Have Lived All My Life In One Campus Or Another.

The Identity Of An Individual Is Essentially A Function Of Her Choices, Rather Than The Discovery Of An Immutable Attribute

No Famine Has Ever Taken Place In The History Of The World In A Functioning Democracy.

A Defeated Argument That Refuses To Be Obliterated Can Remain Very Alive.

It Was Incredible To Me That Members Of One Community Could Kill Members Of Another Not For Anything Personal That They Did But Simply Based On Their Identity.

The Fact That Schools Can Actually Be A Major Factor In Cementing The World Is A Factor That's Worth Considering, The Fact That We All Have A Shared Human Identity In Addition To Many Other Identities.

Education Makes Us The Human Beings We Are. It Has Major Impacts On Economic Development, On Social Equity, Gender Equity. In All Kinds Of Ways, Our Lives Are Transformed By Education And Security. Even If It Had Not One Iota Of Effect [on] Security, It Would Still Remain In My Judgment The Biggest Priority In The World.

The Best Hope For Peace In The World Lies In The Simple But Far-reaching Recognition That We All Have Many Different Associations And Affiliations, And We Need Not See Ourselves As Being Rigidly Divided By A Single Categorization Of Hardened Groups, Which Confront Each Other.

The Elimination Of Ignorance, Of Illiteracy... And Of Needless Inequalities In Opportunities (is) To Be Seen As Objectives That Are Valued For Their Own Sake. They Expand Our Freedom To Lead The Lives We Have Reason To Value, And These Elementary Capabilities Are Of Importance On Their Own

Violence Is Fomented By The Imposition Of Singular And Belligerent Identities On Gullible People, Championed By Proficient Artisans Of Terror.

Poverty Is Not Really As Much Of An Obstacle To Educational Expansion As It's Sometimes Made Out To Be.

One Has To Be Realistic. Ones Concern For Equity And Justice In The World Must Not Carry One Into The Alien Territory Of Unreasoned Belief. Thats Very Important.

There Is Considerable Evidence That Women's Education And Literacy Tend To Reduce The Mortality Rates Of Children

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.

There Are Some People Who Say That Theyre Concerned Only With Poverty But Not Inequality. But I Dont Think That Is A Sustainable Thought. A Lot Of Poverty Is, In Fact, Inequality Because Of The Connection Between Income And Capabilityhaving Adequate Resources To Take Part In The Life Of The Community.

Democracy Is A Universal Value

It Seems To Me To Be Kind Of Inescapable That One Has To Be Interested In The Issue Of Gender And Gender Equality. I Dont Really Expect Any Credit For Going In That Direction. Its The Only Natural Direction To Go In. Why Is It That Some People Dont See That As So Patently Obvious As It Should Be?

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.

There Are Muslims Of All Kinds. The Idea Of Closing Them Into A Single Identity Is Wrong.

One Has To Bring The Multidimensional Impact That Schooling Makes In The Lives Of People. There's Nothing Like It, And I Think The Importance Of It Has To Be Shaken Into People's Understanding And Determination.

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.

We Must Go On Fighting For Basic Education For All, But Also Emphasize The Importance Of The Content Of Education. We Have To Make Sure That Sectarian Schooling Does Not Convert Education Into A Prison, Rather Than Being A Passport To The Wide World.

There's Absolutely No Reason Why At The Level Of Basic Schooling That There Should Be Any Inequity Whatsoever. And [that's] The First Direction To Go, [but] That Need Not Prevent You From Doing All The Other Equalities That You Want.

Starvation Is The Characteristic Of Some People Not Having Enough Food To Eat. It Is Not The Characteristic Of There Being Not Enough Food To Eat.

Characteristics

I Think Just As Armament Had A Major Impact Of A Negative Kind In The World, Education Is Something Which Has A Major Impact Of A Positive Kind In The World. And I Think The American Population, With Its Humanity And With Its Concern About The Future Of The World, Has A Real Reason To Think About What It Can Do To Help The World In Expanding Education.

In Absolutely Every Way, Our Lives Are Transformed By Education And Basic Education In Particular. So I Would Have Thought That In Any Kind Of System, To Say That The Priorities Don't Include Education Is A Mistake, Whether It's [at The] Domestic Level Or At The Global Level.

80 Percent Of The Export Of Armament In The World Comes From The G8 Countries. [the] United States Alone Exports About 50 Percent Of The World's Armament, [for] Which, Of Course, There Has To Be Buyers, And The Buyers Are Very Terribly Keen, Very Often Military Dictator[s] Or Sometimes Not Military Dictator[s] But For Military Purposes. But The Sellers Are Also Promoting This Trade. And Two Thirds Of The Arm Exports Go To Developing Countries. I'm In Favor Of Putting A Control On It, A Ban On It.

The Understanding That Women Are Not Inferior Across The World, It's Something That You Can Get From School, Not Only From The Book But Also From Chatting With Other Kids. It's A Big Impact. One Of The Curious Things Is That Even When - And This We Found From Studies - The Schools Are Doing Pretty Badly In Terms Of Their Education, About Mathematics And Literature And Language, Going To School Transformed People Because I Think The Action Of Schooling, The Activity, Is Very Important.

Development Requires Major Source Of Unfreedom: Poverty As Well As Tyranny, Poor Economic Opportunities As Well As Systematic Social Deprivation, Neglect Of Public Facilities As Well As Intolerance Or Overactivity Of Repressive States.

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.

Hardly Any Famine Affects More Than 5 Percent, Almost Never More Than 10 Percent, Of The Population. The Largest Proportion Of A Population Affected Was The Irish Famine Of The 1840s, Which Came Close To 10 Percent Over A Number Of Years.

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.

Economic Globalization

Education Could Be A Great Vehicle For Gender Equity. It Allows People To See What Your Rights Are By Reading. Quite Often Women, For Example, May Have Rights That They Are Not In The Position To Actually Make Use Of.

I Think Gender Inequality Is A Problem That Goes Back A Long, Long Time. In Human Society, As A Whole, Women Have Tended To Have A Kind Of Inferior Position - Very Often Combined With Playing Up Women As Great Role [models].

To Conclude This Discussion, Assessment Of Justice Demands Engagement With The 'eyes Of Mankind',first, Because We May Variously Identify With The Others Elsewhere And Not Just With Our Local Community;second, Because Our Choices And Actions May Affect The Lives Of Others Far As Well As Near;and Third,because What They See From Their Respective Perspective Of History And Geography May Help Us To Overcome Our Own Parochialism.

I Believe That Virtually All The Problems In The World Come From Inequality Of One Kind Or Another.

The Arab World Is Also The World That Produced Some Of The Greatest Improvements In Mathematics And In Science. Even Today, When A Princeton Mathematician Does An Algorithm, He May Not Remember That "algorithm" Derived From The Name Al-khwarizmi, Who Is A Ninth-century Arab Mathematician.

People's Identities As Indians, As Asians, Or As Members Of The Human Race, Seemed To Give Way - Quite Suddenly - To Sectarian Identification With Hindu, Muslim, Or Sikh Communities.

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?

But The Idea That I Should Be A Teacher And A Researcher Of Some Sort Did Not Vary Over The Years.

No Substantial Famine Has Ever Occurred In A Democratic Country - No Matter How Poor.

[to Organize A School] Looks Much More Difficult In Theory Than It Does In Practice.

Famines Occur Under A Colonial Administration, Like The British Raj In India Or For That Matter In Ireland, Or Under Military Dictators In One Country After Another, Like Somalia And Ethiopia, Or In One-party States Like The Soviet Union And China.

Progress Is More Plausibly Judged By The Reduction Of Deprivation Than By The Further Enrichment Of The Opulent

We Live In A World Community, And Economic Contact Has Partly Contributed To That. Its Also The Case That Economic Opportunity Opened Up By Economic Contact Has Helped To A Great Extent To Reduce Poverty In Many Parts Of The World.

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.

Virtually Everything We Do Is Dependent On Others, From The Arts And Culture To Farmers Who Grow The Food We Eat. Quite A Lot Of The Differences That Make Us Rich And Poor Are Matters Just Of Luck. To Somehow Revel In Ones Privilege Would Be A Mistake. An Even Bigger Mistake Would Be Trying To Convert That Into A Theory That The Rich Are So Much More Productive Than Many Of Us.

Sometimes The Lack Of Substantive Freedoms Relates Directly To Economic Poverty

If A Theory Of Justice Is To Guide Reasoned Choice Of Policies, Strategies Or Institutions, Then The Identification Of Fully Just Social Arrangements Is Neither Necessary Nor Sufficient.

Japan Became An Imperialist Country In Many Ways, But That Was Much Later, After It Had Already Made Big Progress. I Dont Think Japans Wealth Was Based On Exploiting China. Japans Wealth Was Based On Its Expansion In International Trade.

I'm Very Skeptical Of The Amount Of Money That Goes Into Military Expenditure, Not Just In The Poor Countries [but] Also In The Rich. I Think It's One Of The Most Massive Wastes In The World, But Education Is [at The] Other End. It's The Bearer Of The Greatest Fruits That Mankind Has Ever Known.

I Left Delhi, In 1971, Shortly After Collective Choice And Social Welfare Was Published In 1970.

Welfare Programs

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.

After All, The American Society Has Been Also Based On The Premise Of Expanding Education Very Early. That's Been [one] Of The Main Sources Of Success Of The Americans. And There Is Something That The World Can Learn From It And Also Be Assisted By The United States Along With Europe And The Rest Of The World. I Really Hope That This Is An Issue That Engages The American Public.

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.

It Is Important To Reclaim For Humanity The Ground That Has Been Taken From It By Various Arbitrarily Narrow Formulations Of The Demands Of Rationality

The Notion Of Human Right Builds On Our Shared Humanity. These Rights Are Not Derived From The Citizenship Of Any Country, Or The Membership Of Any Nation, But Are Presumed To Be Claims Or Entitlements Of Every Human Being. They Differ, Therefore, From Constitutionally Created Rights Guaranteed For Specific People.

Famines Are Easy To Prevent If There Is A Serious Effort To Do So, And A Democratic Government, Facing Elections And Criticisms From Opposition Parties And Independent Newspapers, Cannot Help But Make Such An Effort. Not Surprisingly, While India Continued To Have Famines Under British Rule Right Up To Independence... They Disappeared Suddenly With The Establishment Of A Multiparty Democracy And... A Free Press And An Active Political Opposition Constitute The Best Early-warning System A Country Threaten By Famines Can Have.

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.

I Guess Some Of The Most Delightful Moments Of My Teenage Years Were When I Was Trying Not Just To Educate Myself But Trying To Educate Others. And I Could See How The Lives Of Children Could Be Transformed In That.

Freedoms Are Not Only The Primary Ends Of Development, They Are Also Among Its Principal Means.

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.

Human Development, As An Approach, Is Concerned With What I Take To Be The Basic Development Idea: Namely, Advancing The Richness Of Human Life, Rather Than The Richness Of The Economy In Which Human Beings Live, Which Is Only A Part Of It.

Human Life Depends Not Only On Income But Also On Social Opportunities, [for Example] What The State Does For Educating.

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?

Gender Inequality Is Not One Problem, It's A Collection Of Problems.

Even Though Im Pro-globalization, I Have To Say Thank God For The Anti-globalization Movement. Theyre Putting Important Issues On The Agenda.

There May Be Countries [where] There's No Gender Inequality In Schooling, Even In Higher Education, But [where There Is] Gender Inequality In High Business. Japan Is A Very Good Example Of That. You Might Find Cases In The United States Where At One Level Women's Equality Has Progressed Tremendously. You Don't Have The Kind Of Problem Of Higher Women's Mortality As You See In South Asia, North Africa, And East Asia, China, Too, And Yet For American Women There Are Some Fields In Which Equality Hasn't Yet Come.

[the] Usa Has Been Immensely Successful In Making The Determination To Deal With Terrorism [as] A Factor In The Global World And, Similarly, If It Took A Similar Interest In Education, It Could Make A Difference.

[globalization] Has Enriched The World Scientifically And Culturally And Benefited Many People Economically As Well.

Economic Globalization

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.

The Governments And The Hard-headed Military Establishment And The General Conservative Part Of America Have Never Taken Much Interest In Democracy, Anyway.

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.

To Say That The Whole Of The Industrial Experience Of Europe And America Just Shows The Rewards Of Exploiting The Third World Is A Gross Simplification.

Europe And America

When I Was Giving A Lecture In India, The Capabilities That I Have To Be Concerned With There, Namely The Ability Of People To Go To A School, To Be Literate, To Be Able To Have A Basic Health Care Everywhere, To Be Able To Seek Some Kind Of Medical Response To One's Ailment; These Become Central Issues In The Indian Context Which They're Not In The Uk, Because You're Well Beyond That.

I Think That So Many Of Our Abilities To Do Things Depend On Interaction With Each Other.

Development Cannot Really Be So Centered Only On Those In Power.

When The Government Is Trying To Penny-pinch And, At The Same Time, Trying To Keep A Defense Expenditure And So Forth, Which Are Regarded As Quote Unquote Essential, The Education Is Regarded Inessential.

An Arab Activist Can Take Pride In The Arab Heritage Of Mathematics And Science Or He Can Take Pride In His Religion, And There's Pride To Be Taken In Both. But One Of Them Could Be Exploited Much More Easily And Has Been In The Context Of World Conflict. And The Other Is Very Difficult To Do On The Grounds That Science And Literature And Mathematics Have Been Among The Uniting Factors In The History Of The World.

Globalization Can Be Very Unjust And Unfair And Unequal, But These Are Matters Under Our Control. Its Not That We Dont Need The Market Economy. We Need It. But The Market Economy Should Not Have Priority Or Dominance Over Other Institutions.

Empowering Women Is Key To Building A Future We Want

The Exchange Between Different Cultures Can Not Possibly Be Seen As A Threat, When It Is Friendly. But I Believe That The Dissatisfaction With The Overall Architecture Often Depends On The Quality Of Leadership.

Economic Growth Without Investment In Human Development Is Unsustainable - And Unethical.

While I Am Interested Both In Economics And In Philosophy, The Union Of My Interests In The Two Fields Far Exceeds Their Intersection.

I Attempted To See Famines As Broad "economic" Problems (concentrating On How People Can Buy Food, Or Otherwise Get Entitled To It), Rather Than In Terms Of The Grossly Undifferentiated Picture Of Aggregate Food Supply For The Economy As A Whole.

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.

Its Scandalous When One Thinks About The People Who Live In A World In Which They Need Not Be Hungry, In Which They Need Not Die Without Medical Care, In Which They Need Not Be Illiterate, They Need Not Feel Hopeless And Miserable So Much Of The Time, And Yet They Are.

Being Able To Read, Write, Do Your Sums Really Transforms A Human Being.

I'm Generally In Favor Of Economic Globalization. Having Said That, It Doesnt Always Work And Does Not Immediately Work In The Interest Of All. There Are Sufferers.

Economic Globalization

The Themes That The Anti-globalization Protesters Bring To The Discussion Are Of Extraordinary Importance. However, The Theses That They Often Bring To It, Sometimes In The Form Of Slogans, Are Often Oversimple.

When The Nobel Award Came My Way, It Also Gave Me An Opportunity To Do Something Immediate And Practical About My Old Obsessions, Including Literacy, Basic Health Care And Gender Equity, Aimed Specifically At India And Bangladesh.

Each Human Being Is A Citizen Of The World. We Have Many Identities, Of Which One Of The Identities Is Our Human Identity. And That's Something That The Schools Can Provide, But That Requires Again A Vision Rather Than Being Centers Of Hatred. It Could Be An Enormous Opportunity To Give That Mission.

China Had Managed To Reduce Their Fertility To A Large Extent Because Of Basic Expansion Of Women's Education, Not Because Of The One-child Family.

South Korea From A Country That Had Relatively Little Primary Education Became Close To Universal Literacy In The Course Of 25, 30 Years, In A Way Trying To Replicate What Japan Had Done Earlier. They Were Learning To Some Extent From The Japanese Experience Too. So I Think, In A Sense, The East Asians Were Following A Path, Which All Other Countries Including South Asia Could Follow But Chose Not Too.

Any Classification According To A Singular Identity Polarizes People In A Particular Way, But If We Take Note Of The Fact That We Have Many Different Identities - Related Not Just To Religion But Also To Language, Occupation And Business, Politics, Class And Poverty, And Many Others - We Can See That The Polarization Of One Can Be Resisted By A Fuller Picture. So Knowledge And Understanding Are Extremely Important To Fight Against Singular Polarization.

Poverty Is A Big Barrier If You Are At The Bottom Layer Of Society, Don't Know Where The Next Meal Is Coming From. It Is Not A Big Barrier Of Taking The Rich With The Poor In A Big Society To Provide Schooling For All.

I Think East Asian Countries, I Think They're Very Fortunate To Have Buddhism Survive As A Strong Influence Because Right From The Time When Buddha Himself, 2,500 Years Ago, Made The Point About The Importance Of Education, And The Word "buddha" Also Means Enlighten[ed] Or Educated. So All The Buddhist Countries, Not Only Japan And Korea And China And Hong Kong And Thailand But Also Even Burma And Sri Lanka, Had A Higher Level Of Education.

Belonging To Humanity Is A Great Thing For Us, And I Think The Schools Can Do It. So I Think We Can Look After The Quality Of Education On The School Even As We Expand The Availability Of Schooling.

Anything That Increases The Voice Of Young Women Tends Therefore To Reduce The Fertility Rate.

I Remain Instinctively Hostile To Communitarian Philosophy And Communitarian Politics.

I Dont Think That India Is Much Celebrated For Its Democracy. Democracy Has Been A Very Neglected Commodity At Home And Abroad.

Democracies Have

But Once We Recognize That Many Ideas That Are Taken To Be Quintessentially Western Have Also Flourished In Other Civilizations, We Also See That These Ideas Are Not As Culture-specific As Is Sometimes Claimed. We Need Not Begin With Pessimism, At Least On This Ground, About The Prospects Of Reasoned Humanism In The World.

The Identity Of Just One Thing, The "clash Of Civilization" View That You're A Muslim Or A Hindu Or A Buddhist Or A Christian, I Think That's Such A Limited Way Of Seeing Humanity, And Schools Have The Opportunity To Bring Out The Fact That We Have Hundreds Of Identities. We Have Our National Identity. We Have Our Cultural Identity, Linguistic Identity, Religious Identity. Yes, Cultural Identity, Professional Identity, All Kinds Of Ways.

The Success Of A Society Is To Be Evaluated Primarily By The Freedoms That Members Of The Society Enjoy.

Human Ordeals Thrive On Ignorance. To Understand A Problem With Clarity Is Already Half Way Towards Solving It.

Economics, As It Has Emerged, Can Be Made More Productive By Paying Greater And More Explicit Attention To The Ethical Considerations That Shape Human Behaviour And Judgment.

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.

Education Makes Human Beings More Articulate. It Transforms People. You Can Think Differently About The World. It Makes It Possible For You To Get Jobs. It Makes A Dramatic Difference. It Generates A Social Equity That We Need.

We Need To Ask The Moral Questions: Do I Have A Right To Be Rich? And Do I Have A Right To Be Content Living In A World With So Much Poverty And Inequality? These Questions Motivate Us To View The Issue Of Inequality As Central To Human Living.

The Market Economy Succeeds Not Because Some People's Interests Are Suppressed And Other People Are Kept Out Of The Market, But Because People Gain Individual Advantage From It.

The Higher Education Has Always Appealed To The South Asian Social Leaders Across All The Countries In South Asia. But Primary Education Has Been Neglected. The Oddity, By The Way, Is If You Look At The Contrast In India, There Are Some Areas Like Kerala Where There's A Long History Of Educational Development.

Thailand's Economic Development Was Driven By Educational Expansion. That Has Been A Very Dramatic Factor, And South Asia Had Been Pretty Miserable In Not Learning From That Experience.

A Society Can Be Pareto Optimal And Still Perfectly Disgusting.

Unceasing Change Turns The Wheel Of Life, And So Reality Is Shown In All It's Many Forms. Dwell Peacefully As Change Itself Liberates All Suffering Sentient Beings And Brings Them Great Joy.

I Really Do Believe That Education, Despite This Massive Potential In Transforming Human Lives, Has Not Received The Kind Of Attention That People Should Have Given To It.

In India, [in] The Great Documents Like [the] Upanishads In Eighth Century B.c., You Find Some Of The Wisest [women] Making Great, Learned Speeches And Then You Worship Them, But Actually Don't Do Very Much About Girls' Education Generally. So I Think There Has Been A Kind Of Dual Presence Of Pain, Respect, And Saying You Are Great, Etc., But Not Providing The Basic Facilities That Make Women Able To Lead The Kind Of Life That They Would Like To And That Men Easily Do.

[n]o Democracy With A Free Press Has Ever Experienced A Major Famine.

Its Very Easy To Capture Pictures Of Jubilant People In The Street After The Nuclear Bomb. But There Were No Pictures Of Morose People Sitting In Their Kitchens And Living Rooms.

Theres A Clear And Strong Connection Between Fertility Reduction And Womens Literacy And Empowerment, Including Womens Gainful Employment. If You Look At The More Than 300 Districts Of India, The Strongest Influences In Explaining Fertility Variations Are Womens Literacy And Gainful Economic Employment.

Imparting Education Not Only Enlightens The Receiver, But Also Broadens The Giver - The Teachers, The Parents, The Friends.

One Of The Things That Any Kind Of Studies Bring Out Is That The Mere Act Of Schooling - Getting Together, The Organization Involved, Going To Classes On Time, And There're Things Being Taught, Sitting Down With Others With Different Backgrounds, Chatting With Them, And, Sometimes When There Are Big Barriers, Eating Together When There Are School Meals, Which Are Big Things Together With A Big Social Impact - They Themselves Have A Major Effect.

Eating Together

The Increasing Tendency Towards Seeing People In Terms Of One Dominant ‘identity’ (‘this Is Your Duty As An American’, ‘you Must Commit These Acts As A Muslim’, Or ‘as A Chinese You Should Give Priority To This National Engagement’) Is Not Only An Imposition Of An External And Arbitrary Priority, But Also The Denial Of An Important Liberty Of A Person Who Can Decide On Their Respective Loyalties To Different Groups (to All Of Which He Or She Belongs).

The Student Community Of Presidency College Was Also Politically Most Active.

The Lack Of Economic Freedom Could Be A Very Major Reason For Loss Of Liberty, Liberty Of Life.

Opportunity Could Be Defined In So Many Ways. There's One Way Of Defining It, Equality Of Opportunity, Which Is In Fact The Equality Of Capability, But The Libertarians Got There First And They Have - Like The Americans Getting Onto The Moon, Naming Every Crater After Something Like An Astronaut - They Have Got There And Named "opportunity" In A Way That We Cannot Get Ownership Of Now.

From The Mid-1970s, I Also Started Work On The Causation And Prevention Of Famines.

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.

Freedom Of Speech

Resenting The Obtuseness Of Others Is Not Good Ground For Shooting Oneself In The Foot.

Sometimes One Makes A Distinction Between Urgency And Importance. And While Disasters Are Urgent, The Basically Most Important Thing Is Education. And That's What Gives It Ultimately Urgency Too, Because Unless You Do It Now, This Important Thing Gets Again And Again Postponed.

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.

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?

Trending Author

Francesco Guicciardini

Robert Baden-Powell

Mohamed ElBaradei

Shirley Chisholm

John Henry Newman

Category