Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation
Amartya Sen
Abstract
The main focus of this book is on the causation of starvation in general and of famines in particular. The traditional analysis of famines concentrates on food supply. This is shown to be fundamentally defective—it is theoretically unsound, empirically inept, and dangerously misleading for policy. The author develops an alternative method of analysis—the 'entitlement approach', which concentrates on ownership and exchange. Aside from developing the underlying theory, the approach is used in a number of case studies of recent famines, including the Great Bengal Famine of 1943, the Ethiopian famine.... ...http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0198284632.001.0001/acprof-9780198284635
Famine in Bangladesh....
A case study of the 1974 famine in Bangladesh, which was associated with the floods of that year, and had an official mortality of 26,000. The causation of the famine is analysed in terms of food availability decline (FAD), and this approach is shown to offer very little by way of explanation of the famine, although the general food shortage resulting from low food imports and government food stocks is identified as a constraint in government relief operations. An analysis of the occupational status and the intensity of destitution show that the largest group were labourers. The exchange entitlement of the labourers is analysed in detail, and it is concluded that this approach gives a much better understanding of the famine.....
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0198284632.001.0001/acprof-9780198284635-chapter-9
On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 3:16 PM, Isha Khan <bdmailer@gmail.com> wrote:
PROFESSOR AMARTYA SEN AND THE 1974 BANGLADESH FAMINE
by Akhtar Hossain
International Economist, IMF-Singapore Regional Training Institute, Singapore
And Senior Lecturer in Economics, The University of Newcastle, Australia
This paper investigates (within Professor Amartya Sen's entitlement approach) some aspects of economic events that led to the 1974 Bangladesh famine. It argues that this famine was not caused by a sudden decline in the aggregate availability of food by natural disasters; rather, the genesis of it can be traced to expansionary economic policies that the government of Bangladesh undertook immediately after the independence of the country. In fact the process of famine started in 1972 when inflation took off in an otherwise price stable country. By the time inflation exploded in 1974 a large section of the rural people belonging to the lower middle class had already slid downward into the poverty trap.
Full Text:
http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/16006544/1575541575/name/PROFESSOR+AMARTYA+SEN+AND+THE+1974+BANGLADESH+FAMINE.pdf
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