Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1998. I'd never heard of him until December 2006, when I picked up one of his books, The Argumentative Indian, in a bookshop in Naini Tal in the foothills of the Indian Himalaya. When I returned to New Delhi I discovered he was speaking at a international conference on Ecological Economics, a conference in which several of my friends were participating. Impressed by his book, I sneaked in to hear him speak and, from near the back of the room, tried discretely to photograph him. Not an easy task, as I discovered. This, as he left the stage at the end of the talk, is the best of a poor bunch of photos — possibly the only one in which he didn't look as if he was in the throes of food poisoning.All content © 2009 Pete McGregor
Thank you for introducing us to this amazing man!
ReplyDeleteHe's certainly remarkable, Patricia, and largely for the right reasons. While I found myself disagreeing with some of his arguments in The Argumentative Indian, I was greatly heartened by his evident compassion and his desire to use economics to benefit those most in need of help, not, as is so frequently the case, those who already benefit most from its misapplication.
ReplyDeleteIf you're interested in the history, society and culture of India, you'd look long and hard to find a better book than this.