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Development as Freedom: An India Perspective Author(s): Amartya Sen Source: Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Oct., 2006), pp. 157-169 Published by: Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27768063 Accessed: 10-11-2015 09:15 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Indian Journal of Industrial Relations. http://www.jstor.org UIR, Vol. 42, No. 2, October 2006 DEVELOPMENT AS FREEDOM: AN INDIA PERSPECTIVE Amartya Sen The paper highlights thatDevelopment as Freedom proceeds from the basic recognitionthat freedom is both (i) theprimary objectiveand (ii) theprinciple means of development.Prof Sen classifiesdiverse freedoms intofive differentcategories, namely economic empowerment, political freedoms, social opportunities, protective security and transparency guarantees. These freedoms are are as can important individually and also interlinked they as as assist well complement each other. The role of democracy and the issue of Freedom, Rights and Public discussion is the analysed then in the paper. Prof. Sen argues that commonly made generalisation that democracy slows economic growth is as incorrect empirical evidence shows otherwise. INTRODUCTION I should confess that I am both happy and embarrassed that my book, Development as Freedom,published just under fouryears ago, has received more attention than I had any reason to expect. a I am elated not only because it is nice to be read, but for further reason connected with the nature of the book. In writing the book, was as the domain of I shameless in taking the whole world application, and it is, therefore,particularly pleasing that the book has, in fact, been distributed across the world. I have tried to argue Harvard Professor of Dr. Amartya Sen is Nobel Laureate, Lamont University Economics & Philosophy, formerly,Master, Trinity College, Cambridge, U.K., President Econometrics Indian Economic American Economic Society, Association, Association and International Economic Association. 158 The Indian Journalof IndustrialRelations in the book that across theworld, we all share some common successes these aspirations and problems. Our in dealing with as our no problems vary greatly, do failures. There is ideal country which got everything just right,but each country can benefit from successes learning from the and failures of other countries. It is particularly gratifying in this context that the book, with all its limitations, has been read in different parts of the world, and has ? I some ? been translated do take childish pleasure in this fact into more the than twenty-five different languages, varying from standard territories of French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese, to the less usual lands of Bahasa Indonesia, Korean, Greek, Turkish, Romanian, Serbian, me Farsi, Vietnamese, and others. This has given at least the illusion of being somewhat vindicated inmy attempted universalism. Turning now to the theme of this seminar1,given the globally can a undivided nature of the basic approach, there be, in no foundational sense, specifically 'Indian perspective' of as 'development freedom'. The Indian perspective has to be? ? and that is clearly the intention of the organisers of the seminar only one part of a larger global perspective. The approach I have tried to a pursue involves universalism, which finds expression in differentways in the book, including the diagnosis of a set of common concerns and basic aspirations that we share across the world, despite the diversity of theirmanifestations in different countries, cultures and societies. For example, the food we like to eat, the clothes we want to wear, the entertainment we seek, the uses we our make of liberties vary greatly between one society and and the of another, yet general freedom being well-fed, well well-entertained and clothed, well-emancipated is, I have argued, a shared objective. This point is important tome inmy attempt to resist the separatism generated by political nationalism and also the growing influence of cultural sectarianism. Our robust uniqueness can, I would argue, go hand in hand with our shared commonality, without any conflict whatsoever. in Along with the happiness receiving attention, I am also, as I mentioned earlier, somewhat embarrassed, since the basic approach presented inmy book is not really new. Indeed, very far or from it. In one form another, theyhave figured in the thoughts Development as Freedom: An India Perspective 159 across over were of people the world thousands of years. They in prominent, for example, the deliberations of Gautama Buddha ? ? arguably the greatest Indian of all times when, twenty-five in hundred years ago, he left his princely home search of wisdom. Gautama was deeply bothered by the unfreedoms of ill health, saw disability, mortality and ignorance which he around him in the foothillsof theHimalayas butwhich he knew existed all around ? the world. The questions that moved him and sent him in ? on a search of enlightenment throw significant light great many overcome subjects, including the need to unfreedoms thatmotivate as the pedestrian approach of 'development freedom'. Even though Buddha himself went on, as we all know, into rather abstruse nature issues involving the of life and the transcendental nature predicament of living beings, nevertheless, the of Buddha's motivating questions remains profoundly relevant for practical as context public policy well. In the transcendental itmay appear trivial that some of the earliest interregional meetings to settle were differences of views arranged by Buddhist intellectuals (respectively inRajagariha in the sixth century BCE, inVaishali in the fifthcentury BCE, in Pataliputra in the third century BCE, and inKashmir in the second centuryAD), and that every early ? ? was attempt at printing in China, Korea and Japan undertaken by Buddhist technologists (the firstprinted book in the world was a Sanskrit Buddhist text, Vajrachedikaprajnaparamita, translated into Chinese in early fifthcentury and printed in 868 AD). But these were major steps in the development of a deliberative and communicative tradition in the world and in enhancing the reach of public reasoning, a proper history ofwhich is yet to be written. Similar connections can be identified in the immensely diverse writings of such thoroughly disparate thinkers as Kautilya, or Ashoka, Shudraka or Akbar, in our, country of Aristotle, Adam Karl Marx or Stuart Smith, Condorcet, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Mill, in theWest (toname just a fewwriters). Valuing substantive freedoms is not at all novel, nor is the search for the ways and means of advancing these freedoms through public deliberation of these earlier and social organisation. Many authors paid specific the adversities we related to attention to the inequality of face, and other stratifications class, gender, race, location, community, 160 The Indian Journalof IndustrialRelations is that divide us. The need to address these structured inequalities a as freedom. critically important part of development FREEDOMS AS ENDS as Development Freedom proceeds from the basic recognition that freedom isboth (1) theprimary objective, and (2) theprincipal a means of development. The former is normative claim and includes the understanding that the assessment of development must not be divorced from the lives thatpeople can lead and the can can real freedoms that they enjoy. Development scarcely be seen in terms of merely of enhancement of inanimate objects as a in convenience, such rise the GNP (or in personal incomes), or or or industrialisation, technological advance, social reforms. These are, of course, valuable and often crucially important on our are influences lives, but they not valuable in themselves; their importance depends on what theydo to the freedoms of the people involved. Even in terms of being at liberty to live reasonably long lives causes (free of escapable ailments and other of premature mortality), it is remarkable that the extent of deprivation forparticular groups can in very rich countries be comparable to that in the so-called 'third world'. As I discuss in the book, in the United States, African ? American as a no Americans (that is, blacks) group have higher ? a an indeed have lower chance of reaching advanced age than do people born in the immensely poorer economies of China or or Jamaica, Costa Rica or, for that matter, substantial parts of India. The freedom frompremature mortality is, of course, helped by a larger income (that is not in dispute), but it also depends on many other features of social organisation, including public health care and medical the nature of security, schooling and education, the extent of social and so on. cohesion, It is critically important, to take an broad view therefore, adequately of development. INTERDEPENDENCE OF FREEDOMS The startingpoint of our analysis

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