Development as

Freedom
Amartya Sen
Freedom: The Ends and Means of Development
Amartya Sen
Literature
Literature
Thought Stream
What is the relationship between
human freedom and development?

The expansion of freedom (of the human

individual) is viewed both as the primary end and
the principal means of development.
What is the relationship between
human freedom and development?

Deprivation = Poverty/Unfreedom
Development=expansion of capability
 Sources of Unfreedom
Poverty

Tyranny

Poor economic opportunities

Systematic social deprivation

Neglect of public facilities

Intolerance or overactivity of repressive states

Engendered myths of hierarchies
of freedoms
 Support-led vs growth-
mediated process

Support-led process does not wait for dramatic

increases in per capita levels of income, and it
works through priority being given to providing
social services(particularly health care and basic
education) that reduce mortality and enhance
the quality of life. (points to Sri Lanka, pre-
reform China, Costa Rica, Kerala as exemplars)
 Quality of Life

The quality of life can be vastly

raised, despite low incomes,
through an adequate program
of social services.
 Capability & HDI
Capability (ability to function in different
capacities in society to constitute her/his well-
being) measures that have since been used in
defining HDI include general and technical
education, medical and health care facilities,
security regarding availability of the
aforementioned
Also encompasses an environment of freedom
of choice and ability to make use of various
freedoms
 The notion of agency
Sen aligns his model with a freedom-centered
understanding of economics and of the process of
development as an agent-oriented view
Agency lived out: With adequate social
opportunities, individuals can effectively shape
their own destiny and help each other. They need
not be seen primarily as passive recipients of the
benefits of cunning development programs.
There is indeed a strong rationale for reorganizing
the positive role of free and sustainable agency
and even of constructive impatience.
 Constituitive and Instrumental
Roles of Freedom
Development consists of substantive freedoms
including elementary capabilities:
Being able to avoid deprivations as starvation,
undernourishment, escapable morbidity and
premature mortality
Being literate and numerate
Enjoying political participation and uncensored
speech, etc.
Case: Freedom as Luxury
 Instrumental Freedoms
Political freedoms including civil rights,
refer to the opportunities to determine
who should govern and on what principles,
also includes the possibility to scrutinize
and criticize authorities, freedom of
political expression, and an uncensored
press
 Instrumental Freedoms
Economic facilities opportunities to enjoy
the utilization of economic resources for
the purpose of consumption, production,
or exchange; dependent on resources
owned/available for use, conditions of
exchange, distributional considerations as
key as aggregation
 Instrumental Freedoms
Social opportunities relate to
arrangements made by society for
education, health care, and so on w/c
influence individual substantive freedom
and enable effective participation in
economic and political activities
 Instrumental Freedoms
Transparency guarantees freedom to deal
with one another under guarantees of
disclosure and lucidity; have an
instrumental role in preventing corruption,
financial irresponsibility and underhanded
dealings
 Instrumental Freedoms
Protective security provides a social safety
net for preventing the affected population
from being reduced to abject misery
(including starvation and death). Consists of
fixed institutional arrangements such as
unemployment benefits, statutory income
supplements to the indigent, ad hoc
arrangements (famine relief or emergency
public employment so that the destitute may
generate income.
 Sen on Evaluation of
effective freedom
evaluation that focuses only on means,
without considering what particular people
can do with them, is insufficient.

evaluation that focuses only on subjective

mental metrics is insufficient without
considering whether that matches with what a
neutral observer would perceive as their
objective circumstances.
 Sen on Evaluation of
effective freedom
evaluation must be sensitive to both actual
achievements (functionings) and effective
freedom (capability).

Reality is complicated and evaluation should

reflect that complexity rather than take a
short-cut by excluding all sorts of information
from consideration in advanceTherefore,
evaluation of how well people are doing must
seek to be as open-minded as possible.
 Sen Triggers to Economic
Discussions
Time Series Criterion: It is not enough to make a choice between the
two (labor/capital-intensive) techniques; it is very much possible that
a higher growth rate does not provide a higher level of social
welfare. Sen, therefore, argues, After getting the two time series of
income flows we have to apply the relevant rates of time discount.
Sen admits that beyond a point these rational calculations cannot be
applied, because it is very difficult to foresee all that is going to
happen in the future. He, therefore, suggests a less satisfactory but
more workable method under which a period of time that is to be
considered is to be fixed and then one should see whether the loss
of immediate output due to the choice of the more capital
intensive technique is more than compensated by the extra output
from it later, before the period under consideration is over. He
conceives a period of recovery and defines it as the period of time
in which the total output, with the more capital-intensive technique,
is just equal to that with the less intensive technique.
 Sen Triggers to Economic
Discussions
-specifically in regard to Indias context of economic reforms in
the early 90s, opening up of economy was not coupled with
broadening reach of markets and change in social policies
(particularly basic education and elementary health care)

-there is a deep seated complementarity between various

economic arrangements including market mechanism and
social opportunities. On the other hand, the opportunity
offered by a well-functioning market may be difficult to use
when a person is handicapped by, say, illiteracy or ill health.

-inequality between men and women is one of the most crucial

social failures in many societies including India and it would
not decline automatically with the process of economic
growth.
 Sen Triggers to Economic
Discussions
-Sens early research focus on hunger and famine is the basis of his
plea for regular assured food entitlement and the avoidance of
inflation;

-The concept of entitlement in the United States refers to the legally

enforceable rights against the state like those of old age pensions.
Sen has included in the concept of entitlements items like nutritious
food, medical and health care, employments, security of food supply
in times of famine etc.

-He considers famine as arising out of the failure of establishing a

system of entitlements. He recognises that the market can provide
entitlement provided all people can get work and a reasonable
wage. The market will not provide entitlements in respect of some
capability improving items. There are no identifiable reciprocities of
commercial significance.
 Mainstream Reach

HDI formulation attributed to Pakistani economist

Mahbub ul Haqs asserting the need to study the
actual lives lived by the deprived, and Sens and
Nussbaums influence in regard to capability; Sens
work on HDI began in the late 1980s
Posed in contrast to the WBs purely income defined
poverty index, by 2012, UNDP Human Development
Report had HDI infused with three additional indices
with the Oxford groups work on MPI citing Sen (how
is income converted into good living?)
By 2011, would bloat WBs poverty figures from 1.44 B
to 1.71 B (added .26 B to global poor)
 Mainstream Reach

The MPIs Oxford developers credit Sens work as their

foundation, and other researchers are following his lead;
governments have begun to institute the measures on a
national level. In 2009, Mexico instituted a
multidimensional measurement of poverty levels, to
better formulate national policy. A year earlier, French
president Nicolas Sarkozy commissioned Sen and fellow
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz to define measures for a
survey of his fellow citizens general well-being. (The
resulting report, released last fall, suggested that the
French government should adopt a multidimensional
approach that focused not solely on income, but on a
range of quality-of-life measures.)
 Disclaimer of meta-model status

Sen: The motivation underlying the approach of

development as freedom is not so much to order
all statesor all alternative scenariosinto one
complete ordering, but to draw attention to
important aspects of the process of development,
each of which deserves attention.Even after such
attention is paid, there will no doubt remain
differences in possible overall rankings, but their
presence is not embarrassing to the purpose at
hand.
 Sens proclivity toward excessive
individualism
Sen diverges from Nussbaum on a key point: One way of
addressing the problem (of determining the functionings that
enable a flourishing life) is to specify a list and do this on
philosophical grounds (Martha Nussbaum does this for her
Capability Theory of Justice). Sen rejects this approach because
he argues that it denies the relevance of the values people may
come to have and the role of democracy (Sen 2004b).
Philosophers and social scientists may provide helpful ideas and
arguments, but the legitimate source of decisions about the
nature of the life we have reason to value must be the people
concerned. Sen therefore proposes a social choice exercise
requiring both public reasoning and democratic procedures of
decision-making.
 Extant Critique

T.N. Srinivasan points out that the varying importance of different capabilities does not readily
make for operational metrics needed for policy planning, analysis and evaluation

Peet and Hartwick acknowledge his ideas in regard to ethicality and the interlinked network of
capabilities/substantive freedoms, yet they see him falling short in fully developing the political-
economic aspect required in transforming society

Sen has had very public disagreements on degrees of state intervention and redistribution
mechanisms (Kerala vs Gujarat development strats); Gujarat model upheld by Indias Tryst with
Destiny authors and advocates of private entrepreneurship and growth, Jagdish Bhagwati-Arvind
Panagariya; Bhagwati has also called out Sen for fetishizing Bangladesh, and lately China

Kunal Sen of Manchester University and an a Chicago University professor who requested anonymity
maintain that both Bhagwati and Sen haven't paid enough attention to key flaws in India's record in
implementing government programmes. Ghemawat adds: "Management and institutional
performance are areas ignored by Sen. Kunal Sen shares Bhagwati's concerns that high expenditure
in such a country is an unwise option; Kunal Sen has also called out Amartya Sen on perceived
inattention to labor reform, political party funding, etc
 Polarizing presence
Kerala's social indicators are still high and there isn't
much gender bias in both health and education. On
the other hand, in Gujarat, while the female infant
mortality rate stood at 51, the male infant mortality
rate was 44 in 2010-11 (the corresponding national
figures were 49 and 46, respectively, and for Kerala
11 and 12). In education, in 2011, 87.2% of Gujarati
males were literate against 70.7% of females; a gap of
17.2%. The corresponding all-India figures are 82.1%
and 65.4%; a gap of 16.7%. The gap for Kerala is just
4%.
Polarizing presence
 References

Morrell, Dan. Who is Poor: Right Now/Qualitative Measures,

Harvard Magazine, January-February 2011
http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/01/who-is-poor

NP, Ullekh, Amartya Sen vs Bhagwati: Who is right in the debate on

Gujarat-Kerala growth models? Economic Times/India Times, July 28,
2013 http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-
nation/amartya-sen-vs-bhagwati-who-is-right-in-the-debate-on-
gujarat-kerala-growth-models/articleshow/21406549.cms

Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. Anchor Books:

New York.