India and its Contradictions

An Uncertain Glory

UPDATED WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION 
 
'Magnificent ... a major work by two of the world's most perceptive and intelligent India-watchers writing today' William Dalrymple, New Statesman 
 
 
From two of India's leading economists, Jean Drèze and Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory is a passionate, considered argument for the need for a greater understanding of inequalities in India. 
 
When India regained independence from colonial rule in 1947, it immediately adopted a firmly democratic political system, with multiple parties, freedom of speech and extensive political rights. The famines of the British era disappeared, and steady economic growth replaced stagnation, accelerating further over the last three decades to make India's growth the second fastest among large economies. Despite a recent dip, it is still one of the highest in the world. 
 
Maintaining rapid yet environmentally sustainable growth remains an important and achieveable goal for India. Drèze and Sen argue that the country's main problems lie in the disregarding of the essential needs of the people. There have been major failures both to foster participatory growth and to make good use of the public resources generated by economic growth to enhance people's living conditions; social and physical services remain inadequate, from schooling and medical care to safe water, electricity, and sanitation. In the long run, even high economic growth is threatened by the underdevelopment of infrastructure and the neglect of human capabilities, in contrast with the holistic approach pioneered by Japan, South Korea and China. 
 
In a democracy, addressing these failures requires not only significant policy change, but also a clearer public understanding of the abysmal extent of deprivation in the country. Yet public discussion in India tends to be constricted to the lives and concerns of the relatively affluent. This book presents a powerful analysis not only of India's deprivations and inequalities, but also of the restraints on addressing them - and of the possibility of change through democratic practice.

After regaining independence in 1947, India immediately adopted a firmly democratic political system. The famines of the British era disappeared, along with economic stagnation; despite a recent dip, India's growth remains among the fastest in the world. Yet, Drèze and Sen argue, there have been failures both to foster participatory growth and to make good use of the public resources generated by economic growth to enhance people's living conditions. 
 
This book presents a powerful analysis not only of India's deprivations and inequalities, but also of the restraints on addressing them - and of the possibility of change through democratic practice.

Expanded Edition

Collective Choice and Social Welfare

Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen's first great book, now reissued in a fully revised and expanded second edition 
 
'Can the values which individual members of society attach to different alternatives be aggregated into values for society as a whole, in a way that is both fair and theoretically sound? Is the majority principle a workable rule for making decisions? How should income inequality be measured? When and how can we compare the distribution of welfare in different societies?' 
 
These questions, from the citation by the Swedish Academy of Sciences when Amartya Sen was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, refer to his work in Collective Choice and Social Welfare, the most important of all his early books. Originally published in 1970, this classic work in welfare economics has been recognized for its ground-breaking role in integrating economics and ethics, and for its influence in opening up new areas of research in social choice, including aggregative assessment. It has also had a large influence on international organizations, including the United Nations, particularly in its work on human development. In its original version, the book showed that the 'impossibility theorems' in social choice theory-led by the pioneering work of Kenneth Arrow-need not be seen as destructive of the possibility of reasoned and democratic social choice. 
 
Sen's ideas about social choice, welfare economics, inequality, poverty and human rights have continued to evolve since the book's first appearance. This expanded edition, which begins by reproducing the 1970 edition in its entirety, goes on to present eleven new chapters of new arguments and results. As in the original version, the new chapters alternate between non-mathematical chapters completely accessible to all, and those which present mathematical arguments and proofs. The reader who prefers to shun mathematics can follow all the non-mathematical chapters on their own, to receive a full, informal understanding. There is also a substantial new introduction which gives a superb overview of the whole subject of social choice.

With his masterly prose, ease of erudition and ironic humour, Sen is one of the few great world intellectuals on whom we may rely to make sense out of our existential confusion

Amartya Sen occupies a unique position among modern economists. He is an outstanding economic theorist, a world authority on social choice and welfare economics. He is a leading figure in development economics, carrying out path-breaking work on appraising the effectiveness of investment in poor countries

The first edition in 1970 of this fine book was of immense importance and at the core of Amartya Sen's Nobel Prize. His contributions since, to our conceptions of rights, liberty, justice, identity, poverty, inequality and development, have been of still greater significance to our understanding of the fundamental challenges we face as individuals and societies in thinking about who we are and how we should act. The substantive and profound additions in this edition delve even deeper into the arguments of the original and relate them to the central questions and issues of his subsequent research and writing. Sen is one of the great minds of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We owe him a huge debt

Amartya Sen is one of the world's leading public intellectuals. He is Professor of Economics and Professor of Philosophy at Harvard. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1998 to 2004, and won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998. His many celebrated books include Development as Freedom (1999), The Argumentative Indian (2005) and The Idea of Justice (2010). They have been translated into more than 30 languages. In 2020 he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.

'Can the values which individual members of society attach to different alternatives be aggregated into values for society as a whole, in a way that is both fair and theoretically sound? Is the majority principle a workable rule for making decisions? How should income inequality be measured? When and how can we compare the distribution of welfare in different societies?' So reads the 1998 Nobel citation by the Swedish Academy, acknowledging Amartya Sen's important contributions in welfare economics and particularly his work in Collective Choice and Social Welfare. 
 
Originally published in 1970, this classic study has been recognized for its ground-breaking role in integrating economics and ethics, and for its influence in opening up new areas of research in social choice. This expanded edition preserves the text of the original while presenting eleven new chapters of fresh arguments and results. Both the new and original chapters alternate between non-mathematical treatments of Sen's subjects accessible to all, and mathematical arguments and proofs. A new introduction gives a far-reaching, up-to-date overview of the subject of social choice.

The Idea of Justice

From Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice is a refreshing alternative approach to mainstream theories of justice. 
 
 Is justice an ideal, for ever beyond our grasp, or something that may actually guide our practical decisions and enhance our lives? 
 
 At the heart of Sen's argument is his insistence on the role of public reason in establishing what can make societies less unjust. But there are always choices to be made between alternative assessments of what is reasonable, and competing positions can each be well defended. Rather than rejecting these pluralities, we should use them to construct a theory of justice that can accommodate divergent points of view. Sen also inspiringly shows how the principles of justice in the modern world must avoid parochialism and address vital questions of global injustice. 
 
 The breadth of vision, intellectual acuity and striking humanity of one of the world's leading public intellectuals have never been more clearly shown than in this remarkable book. 
 
 'A major advance in contemporary thinking' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;John Gray, Literary Review 
 
 'The most important contribution to the subject since John Rawls's A Theory of Justice' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Hilary Putnam, Harvard University 
 
 'Sen writes with dry wit, a feel for history and a relaxed cosmopolitanism ... a conviction that economists and philosophers are in business to improve the world burns on almost every page' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Economist 
 
 'Sen's magisterial critique of the dominant mode of liberal political philosophy confirms him as the English-speaking world's pre-eminent public intellectual' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;New Statesman Books of the Decade 
 
 Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor at Harvard. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge 1998-2004. His most recent books are The Argumentative Indian, Identity and Violence and Development as Freedom. His books have been translated into thirty languages.

Is justice an ideal, forever beyond our grasp, or something that may actually guide our practical decisions and enhance our lives? In this wide-ranging book, Amartya Sen presents an alternative approach to mainstream theories of justice which, despite their many specific achievements have taken us, he argues, in the wrong direction in general. 
 
At the heart of Sen's argument is his insistence on the role of public reason in establishing what can make societies less unjust. But it is in the nature of reasoning about justice, argues Sen, that it does not allow all questions to be settled even in theory; there are choices to be faced between alternative assessments of what is reasonable. Sen also shows how concern about the principles of justice in the modern world must avoid parochialism, and further, address questions of global injustice. The breadth of vision, intellectual acuity and striking humanity of one of the world's leading public intellectuals have never been more clearly shown than in this remarkable book.

The Illusion of Destiny

Identity and Violence

One of the world's leading intellectuals looks at the deep reasons behind so many of the world's conflicts, and suggests a way to resolution.

Profound and humane, Amartya Sen's Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny examines some of the most explosive problems of our time and shows how we can move towards peace as firmly as we have spiralled towards war. 
 
 In this penetrating book, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen argues that we are becoming increasingly divided along lines of religion and culture, ignoring the many other ways in which people see themselves, from class and profession to morals and politics. When we are put into narrow categories the importance of human life becomes lost. 
 
 Through his lucid exploration of such subjects as multiculturalism, fundamentalism, terrorism and globalization, he brings out the need for a clear-headed understanding of human freedom and a constructive public voice in Global civil society. The hope of harmony in today's world lies in a clearer understanding of our sheer diversity. 
 
 'Identity and Violence is a moving, powerful essay about the mischief of bad ideas' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;The Economist 
 
 'Impassioned, eloquent and often moving, Identity and Violence is a sustained attack on the "solitarist" theory which says that human identities are formed by membership of a single social group' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;John Gray, Guardian 
 
 'Rich in ideas ... I would love to send it to Osama bin Laden and have his reply' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Spectator 
 
 'Sen's moving and most personal book yet' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;The Times Literary Supplement 
 
 'Stimulating ... simple and persuasive' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Financial Times 
 
 'An accessible and exceptional humanitarian' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Jon Snow, New Statesman Heroes of Our Time 
 
 Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor at Harvard. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998. His other books published by Penguin include The Argumentative Indian and The Idea of Justice.

The world may be more riven by murderous violence than ever before, yet Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen argues in this sweeping philosophical work that its brutalities are driven as much by confusion as by inescapable hatred. 
 
Sen argues in his new book that conflict and violence are sustained today, no less than the past, by the illusion of a unique identity. Indeed, the world is increasingly taken to be divided between religions (or 'cultures' or 'civilizations'), ignoring the relevance of other ways in which people see themselves through class, gender, profession, language, literature, science, music, morals or politics, and denying the real possibilities of reasoned choices. In Identity and Violence he overturns such stereotypes as the 'the monolithic Middle East' or 'the Western Mind'. Through his penetrating investigation of such subjects as multiculturalism, fundamentalism, terrorism and globalization, he brings out the need for a clear-headed understanding of human freedom and a constructive public voice in Global civil society. The world, Sen shows, can be made to move towards peace as firmly as it has recently spiralled towards war.

Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity

The Argumentative Indian

The most important book published about India for many years, and a No. 1 bestseller in India. Staggering reception, including:

From Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity brings together an illuminating selection of writings on contemporary India. 
 
 India is an immensely diverse country with many distinct pursuits, vastly different convictions, widely divergent customs and a veritable feast of viewpoints. 
 
 Out of these conflicting views spring a rich tradition of skeptical argument and cultural achievement which is critically important, argues Amartya Sen, for the success of India's democracy, the defence of its secular politics, the removal of inequalities related to class, caste, gender and community, and the pursuit of sub-continental peace. 
 
 'Profound and stimulating ... the product of a great mind at the peak of its power' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;William Dalrymple, Sunday Times 
 
 'One of the most influential public thinkers of our times...This is a book that needed to have been written...It would be no surprise if it were to become as defining and as influential as work as Edward Said's Orientalism' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Soumya Bhattacharya, Observer 
 
 'The winner of the 1998 Nobel prize in economics is a star in India ... he deserves the recognition ... shows that the argumentative gene is not just a part of India's make-up that can easily be wished away' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;The Economist 
 
 Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor at Harvard. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge 1998-2004. His most recent books are The Idea of Justice, Identity and Violence and Development as Freedom. His books have been translated into thirty languages.

India is a very diverse country with many distinct pursuits, vastly different convictions, widely divergent customs, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. The Argumentative Indian brings together an illuminating selection of writings from Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen that outline the need to understand contemporary India in the light of its long argumentative tradition. 
 
The understanding and use of this rich argumentative tradition are critically important, Sen argues, for the success of India's democracy, the defence of its secular politics, the removal of inequalities related to class, caste, gender and community, and the pursuit of sub-continental peace.

Amartya Sen

Sen is so engaging, so full of charm and has such a clear gift for the graceful sentence. It's a wonderful book, the portrait of a citizen of the world ... full of its author's beguiling personality, elegance and wit of presentation, and joyous in its celebration of the life of the mind.

Sen's sensibility still seems Tagorean. There is the same affinity for freedom and imagination, a similar commitment to the vulnerable and the downtrodden, but most of all a shared sense that we don't yet know all there is to know about the world.

The clarity of Sen's thought and the lucidity of his prose are delightful and entertaining but the lightness of his touch can often be deceptive because it sometimes conceals the depth and range of Sen's erudition, the intensity and the passion of his commitment to certain values and ideas and his relentless quest to bring together the home and the world.

a charming, immensely readable, and very enjoyable voyage through the making of a great mind ... we are just led with rare good humour and gentle wit through the formative years of his life ... This is a very accessible book, "fun" to use one of Sen's favourite words, written in beautifully constructed short sentences that explain the most profound observations with commendable brevity ... It is Sen's capacity to maintain a simple style while telling amusing stories or explaining complex issues (as he does occasionally) that is both unique and captivating ... This memoir is an unforgettable story of the evolution of a thinking and enquiring and all too human a mind, as also a tribute to one who has harnessed his abundant academic talent to the needs of the humblest and poorest

Amartya Sen's Home in the World is really three books in one. A sensitively written memoir of the first thirty years of his life, it is interspersed with sharp commentaries on history and politics as well as intellectual disquisitions on economic theory and philosophy.

hypnotic ... Amartya Sen's exemplary life is a lesson in engagement with the world in which he is so at home; he is a real advertisement for someone who is happy being "a citizen of nowhere", or everywhere.

it strikes me that Sen is more than an economist, a moral philosopher or even an academic. He is a life-long campaigner, through scholarship and activism, via friendships and the occasional enemy, for a more noble idea of home - and therefore of the world.

This charming and absorbing book ... has the flavour of a relaxed conversation with a gifted raconteur ... Sen's memoir traces the experiences, encounters, and relationships that determined his conceptual concerns and intellectual evolution. It is also a deeply humane appreciation of what life can offer, filled with respect and empathy for other humans. 

captivating ... This is not, though, just a book of ideas. Home in the World can't help but be the work of an intellectual. But, as its title implies, it is the work of an intellectual who acknowledges that ideas grow out of - are imbricated with - phenomena external to the self.

[full of] raconteurial energy ... Sen writes with an elegance and wit ... His accounts of his own work are characteristically succinct and fluent ... His evocation of post-war Cambridge and the towering figures of 20th-century economics are affectionate but just. Even more vivid is the picture of his undergraduate days in Calcutta, with its student revolutionaries and generous booksellers. ... It is striking just how much of Sen's own large-hearted liberalism turn out to have been prefigured in the freedoms of his unusual childhood.

Home in the World is the chronicle of an early life well lived and well considered.

Amartya Sen's memoir Home in the World beautifully conveys the immense, curious charm of his unapologetic high intelligence.

graceful and hopeful ... Home in the World focuses on Sen's formative years, revealing the roots of his academic interests in his early experiences ... Sen is such a charming and engaging narrator

A charming, lively account of Sen's remarkable adolescence

Sen's gentle memoir shed[s] light on the distant nooks of a long life of distinction. ... There is something of Tagore in the judicious Mr. Sen. He is an un?inching man of science but also insistently humane.

warmhearted, clear-eyed account of the formative years of his life, a book that reaches from Myanmar to Berkeley ... a testament to just how far, in one life, one man might go into that vast world ... Sen's writing style is even-keeled and gently humorous.

PRAISE FOR AMARTYA SEN

With his masterly prose, ease of erudition and ironic humour, Sen is one of the few great world intellectuals on whom we may rely to make sense out of our existential confusion

Amartya Sen is one of the most distinguished minds of our time [who] enjoyably mixes moments of profundity with flashes of mischievous provocation

The world's poor and dispossessed could have no more articulate or insightful a champion

An accessible and exceptional humanitarian

Sen is one of the great minds of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We owe him a huge debt

A distinguished inheritor of the tradition of public philosophy and reasoning - Roy, Tagore, Gandhi, Nehru ... if ever there was a global intellectual, it is Sen

A Memoir

Where is 'home'? For Amartya Sen, home has been many places - Dhaka in modern Bangladesh, the little university town of Santiniketan, where he was raised as much by his grandparents as by his parents, Calcutta where he first studied economics and was active in student movements, and Trinity College, Cambridge, to which he came aged 19. 
 
Home in the World shows how Sen's experience shaped his ideas - about economics, philosophy, identity, community, famines, gender inequality, social choice and the power of discussion in public life. The joys of learning and the importance of friendship are powerfully conveyed. He invokes some of the great thinkers of the past and his own time - from Ashoka in the third century BC and Akbar in the sixteenth, to David Hume, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Maurice Dobb, Kenneth Arrow and Eric Hobsbawm. Above all, Sen emphasises the importance of enlarging our views as much as we can, of human sympathy and understanding across time and distance, and of being at home in the world.

Amartya Sen

Praise for Home in the World

Sen is so engaging, so full of charm and has such a clear gift for the graceful sentence. It's a wonderful book, the portrait of a citizen of the world ... full of its author's beguiling personality, elegance and wi ...

Sen's sensibility still seems Tagorean. There is the same affinity for freedom and imagination, a similar commitment to the vulnerable and the downtrodden, but most of all a shared sense that we don't yet know all t ...

The clarity of Sen's thought and the lucidity of his prose are delightful and entertaining but the lightness of his touch can often be deceptive because it sometimes conceals the depth and range of Sen's erudition, ...

Sen is so engaging, so full of charm and has such a clear gift for the graceful sentence. It's a wonderful book, the portrait of a citizen of the world ... full of its author's beguiling personality, elegance and wi ...

Sen's sensibility still seems Tagorean. There is the same affinity for freedom and imagination, a similar commitment to the vulnerable and the downtrodden, but most of all a shared sense that we don't yet know all t ...

The clarity of Sen's thought and the lucidity of his prose are delightful and entertaining but the lightness of his touch can often be deceptive because it sometimes conceals the depth and range of Sen's erudition, ...

Sen is so engaging, so full of charm and has such a clear gift for the graceful sentence. It's a wonderful book, the portrait of a citizen of the world ... full of its author's beguiling personality, elegance and wi ...

Sen's sensibility still seems Tagorean. There is the same affinity for freedom and imagination, a similar commitment to the vulnerable and the downtrodden, but most of all a shared sense that we don't yet know all t ...

The clarity of Sen's thought and the lucidity of his prose are delightful and entertaining but the lightness of his touch can often be deceptive because it sometimes conceals the depth and range of Sen's erudition, ...

Books by Amartya Sen

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