India-born Nobel laureate Amartya Sen will be felicitated by U.S. President Barack Obama for his efforts to increase the understanding of how to fight hunger and poverty.
Mr. Barack Obama would felicitate Mr. Sen, 78, with the 2011 National Humanities Medal, along with others, the White House announced.
The White House said the award is being given to Mr. Sen for his insights into the causes of poverty, famine, and injustice.
“By applying philosophical thinking to questions of policy, he has changed how standards of living are measured and increased our understanding of how to fight hunger,” the White House said as it announced the list of awardees.
The First Lady would also attend the awards ceremony for the 2011 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal scheduled on Monday.
The 2011 National Medal of Arts would be awarded to Will Barnet, Rita Dove, Al Pacino, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Martin Puryear, Mel Tillis, United Service Organization and Andre Watts.
The 2011 National Humanities Medal will be given to Kwame Anthony Appiah, John Ashbery, Robert Darnton, Andrew Delbanco, National History Day, Charles Rosen, Teofilo Ruiz, and Ramon Saldivar, besides Amartya Sen.
Mr. Amartya Sen won his Nobel Prize for economics in 1998 for his studies of the roots of poverty.
Keywords: National Humanities Medal, Amartya Sen, Barack Obama
Comments:
Since Independence India has done very little for improvement of health care, to provide proper education to all and removing of poverty.
Great achievement Sir.Proud of you.
It is a great recognition to the Indian born developmental economist. He has always stressed on investment in education and health and the two rising economic powers in Asia,( India and china) has followed his advice and benefited by that. All Indians Will be proud of this.
National Humanities Medal for an Indian Developmental Economist , Nobel Laureate Prof. Amartya Sen , is also a Pride for Mother India & 1.21 billion Indians. Govt. of India should use The Theory of Amartya Sen to curb poverty & Hunger in India .
Great.Has he contributed to the welfare of the suffering humanity apart from making grandiloquent theories ? It all reminds me of Professor Hardy's book 'Mathematician apology' wherein he came to the conclusion that elegant things serve no purpose like beautiful flowers which can while being beautiful cannot satisfy a hungry man. Thus for things to be useful they should necessarily be ugly. What on earth a friend of poor people does sitting in a western country driving around in big cars ? Common world, we need doers and not talkers. There is a familiar ancient story in India wherein a housewife and a butcher turned out to be more saintly than a sage who was meditating under a tree who when his meditation was disturbed looked at the crane with anger for it to be burnt into ashes.
Sen is a very impressive guy in his field. But my fear about the use of the equality of capacity concept is that it will be used to justify further privatisation of public services to the benefit of shareholders and detriment of service-users and staff.I hope you will have something to say about co-production of services. Look forward to reading it.