Book Review Session

2. by
Amartya Sen
76th Special Foundation Training Course
National Academy of Planning and Development

3. Amartya Kumar Sen born on 3rd November 1933 , in a
Bengali family in Manikganj, Bangladesh
 Sen began his high-school education at St Gregory's School
in Dhaka in 1940, he studied at Visya-Bharati University
school. He later went to Presidency College, Kolkata, where
he earned a B.A. in Economics with First Class, as a
graduating student of the University of Calcutta.
In 1953, he moved to Trinity College, Cambridge
 Amartya K. Sen is an Indian economist and philosopher of
Bengali ethnicity, who since 1972 has taught and worked in
the United Kingdom and the United States

4.  He was awarded the Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic
science in 1998 and
 Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his
work in welfare economics
 He is currently the Professor of
Thomas W. Lamont University
and Professor of Economics and
Philosophy at Harvard University.

5.  Publised by: Oxford University Press
Copy right@International Labour Organization
1981
 First publish: 1981
 Sixth impression: 2002
Printed by: Ram Printograph,Delhi
Page No: 257 Pages
 Price: 275 Rs

6. 1. Poverty and entitlements
2. Concepts of poverty
3. Poverty: Identification and aggregation
4. Starvation and Famines
5. The Entitlement approach
6. The Great Bengal Famine
7. The Ethiopian Famine
8. Drought and Famine in the Sahel
9. Famine in Bangladesh
10. Entitlements and Deprivation

7.  This book was prepared for the World Employment
Programme, launched by the International Labour
Organisation(ILO) in 1969.
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.

8.  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 famines of 1973 and 1974, the Bangladesh
famine of 1974, and the famines in the countries of the
African Sahel in the 1970s
 The book also provides a general analysis of the
characterization and measurement of poverty.
Finally, he explained general issues of deprivation related
to entitlement system.

9.  The Author, Introduces the elementary concepts
of his approach to starvation - "The Entitlement
Approach".
 He clearly distinguishes between the food
availability and the relationships between a person
and the food available.
 According to him, a person can get food to which
he is legally or socially entitled. He can exchange
his owned entitlements for other entitlements.
 Thus, even if plenty is available in author's words
- "Starvation is seen as the result of his inability to
establish entitlement to enough food".

10.  Poverty is a matter of deprivation.
 Poverty may look very like inequality between
the poorest group and the rest of the
community
He presents various methods of poverty
evaluation and a critique of each-
1. The most usual head count method (i.e. relative
number of poor)
2. Biological and nutritional approach (i.e. minimum
amount of nutrition required).

11. Problems in the conceptualization and
measurement of poverty are discussed. Two
requirements are identified as (1) a method of
identifying a group of people as poor (identification),
and (2) a method of aggregating the characteristics
of the set of poor people into an overall image of
poverty (aggregation).
Characteristics and commodities: through specifying a
set of basic or minimum needs and regarding the
inability to fulfill these needs as the test of poverty.
 Wheat, rice, potatoes are commodities; while calories,
protein, vitamin are characteristics of these commodities.

12.  Direct method vs income method
 Family size and equivalent adults
 Poverty gaps and relative deprivation:
 The aggregation is dealt with by advocating the
axiom of "Ranked Relative Deprivation". This
deals with the relative poverty amongst the
'poor'

13.  Brings out the difference between starvation and
famines. It sets a stage for discussion of famines in
particular. He distinguishes both on - 1. Time Contrast
(Long term and Short Term)
2. Group Contrast (Endemic and Specific
Community)
The time contrast
Although food availability increased over the year, there is
a problem of distribution of food between different groups
in a nation in every time. Famine can strike even when
regular starvation is on firm decline
 Group Contrast : No famine has even occurred in which
all groups in a country have suffered from starvation since
different groups have different commodity power over
food

14.  The entitlement approach to starvation and
famines concentrates on the ability of people to
command food through the legal means
available in the society, including the use of
production possibilities, trade opportunities
 Person can be plunged into starvation if his
endowment collapse either through a fall in
endowment or through an unfavorable shift in
exchange entitlement mapping.

15.  The exchange entitlement mapping specifies
the exchange entitlement set of alternative
commodity bundles respectively for each
endowment bundle
Entitle
ment
Endowment
Bundle
Exchange Commodity
Bundle
A
peasant
A land Can produce a
bundle of food
Sell them to buy
foods
Labor Power By selling his labor
power, He can get a
wage
With that buy
commodities
Other resources

16.  Limitation of the entitlement approach:
 There can be ambiguities in the specification on
entitlements.
 Secondly, entitlement relations concentrate on rights
within legal structure in the society; some transfers
involve violation of these rights such as looting.
When these extra entitlement transfers are
important, the entitlement approach to famines will
be defective.

17. An important aspect of the famine was its association
with an uneven expansion in incomes and purchasing
powers.
 According Famine Inquiry commission, the great Bengal
famine in 1943 cost 1.5 to 4 million lives due to food
shortage. But other explored that it was not only due to
food shortage. Mortality reached its peak in December
1943, this was mostly the result of famine-induced
epidemics, e.g. of cholera, malaria and smallpox.

18. • The causes of sharp movements of exchange
entitlements in this case can be briefed as-
1. Printing of currency leading to inflationary pressures
2. Speculation and Hoarding
3. 'Indifferent' winter crop
4. Prohibition of cereal export
5. An uneven expansion of income and purchasing power
6. Impoverishment of groups not directly related to food
production

20.  Between 1540 and 1742, there were
apparently ten major famines, one third of
total population was killed during 1880-92.
There was low purchasing power in Wollo
province to have food from outside. This can be
understood in terms of extensive entitlement
failure of the Wollo population.

22. The Sahel can be defined as 'dry zone' and the
'semi-arid' zone. It comprises of six West African
countries politically and geographically the
causal factor of famine was mainly food shortage
due to drought.

24.  First the flood, then the famine - this is the story of
famine in Bangladesh in 1974.
 The victims were mostly day labourer. There was
decline in employment opportunities. The decline in
the rice entitlement of wage is the result of rise in rice
price.
 There was also decline in money wage rate. The
weakening of market strength of labour also leads to
decline in employment opportunities as a result of
flood and related contraction of rural economic
activities

26.  Famine can break out for reasons that are not
directly commanded and food production at all.
 The entitlement approach pleases food production
and in a network of relationships and shift in some
of these relations can precipitate famines even
without receiving any impulse from food
production.
 There is nothing extraordinary in the market
mechanism taking food away from famine-stricken
areas to elsewhere.

27.  The book can be further divided into three parts for
reading purposes:
* For layman [Chapter 1-5,10]
* Case Studies [Chapter 6-9]
* For the erudite economist [Appendix A-D]
 The case studies chosen are of widely different
nature and lend credit to his work
 Entitlement approach is highly focused with
neglecting the other factors
 He neglected the infrastructural breakdown
 There can be ambiguities in the specification on
entitlements.

28.  The entitlement approach views famine as an
economic disaster not as a food crisis. Famine
can take place without declination of food
availability although this approach has usual
famine analysis. The author very successfully
explores this view and examples of case studies.
 It can be a strong tool for the policy makers to
combat Famine along with traditional Food
Availability Decline (FAD) Approach.