Thank you very much for your interest in my research. I am fully aware about your voluminous contributions on Sen’s famine philosophy as well as your long-standing position.

 The points you have underlined in your query are well taken. However, my approach to reviewing Sen’s theory will be a bit different.

 Sen’s approach to famine analysis is founded on one very simple premise: Ownership of food is one of the most primitive property rights (is food a property?) and in each society there are rules governing this right.  Sen treats this ‘primitive (?) right’ as a social entitlement.  Accordingly, the lack of access to food is tantamount to entitlement failure. This proposition in turn leads to the conclusion that all famines are the result of entitlement failures. Since entitlements are social guarantees, entitlement failure means ‘social deprivation’.

 To establish his theory, Sen has first attempted to discredit the traditional explanation of famine causation. In other words, Sen intended to disrepute a view, which has developed from general experience and observation that all famines have been preceded by some kind of natural and/or human-made disasters.

 Thus, Sen’s famine analysis can be understood in terms of two distinct, but intimately interrelated, theories or ideas. The first one is concerned about discrediting the conventional wisdom that the overall food availability declined in the famine-affected area. In other words, foodgrains were actually available in the market, but individuals could not buy them due to the fall in their exchange entitlement. The second idea concerns the articulation of his innovative ideas, i.e., ‘entitlement failures’ and ‘social deprivation’. These two ideas/or theories need to be treated separately, because Sen’s failure to prove satisfactorily in the first case does not suggest that his second one is wrong.

 To me, the whole idea of adequacy or inadequacy of food availability in an area is a matter of perception, not statistical verification. This is particularly so in the context of the famines Sen has studied. Consider the Bengal famine of 1943. Was the quality of official statistics on cereal production and imports good enough to make any valid inference about whether food availability during the famine time was adequate or inadequate? I am fully aware of the quality of the data Sen used in analysing the food supply situation in the 1974 famine in Bangladesh. This is because I am a Bangladeshi by birth. In 1974, I was 21 years old university student. The village in which my parents lived was affected by the flood too. Therefore, I felt the level of brutality that the flood inflicted in the rural life.

 If the level of hunger does not cause much public concern, the food availability in the area may be perceived as low but not inadequate. This was the food situation prevailing in Bengal and Bangladesh before the famines. Both were food-deficit regions and economic conditions of ordinary people were less than expected. However, when the famines occurred, meaning many people began to die out of starvation as well as starvation-related diseases, the general impression was that overall food supply in the concerned areas declined. And the natural and human-made calamities produced all the evidences required to form that impression. This impression cannot be contradicted with statistical data, whose conceptual and factual basis is highly questionable.

 Sen’s famine philosophy is more than four decades old. Yet, his analysis has remained controversial. If we take Hume’s view about the continuation of academic controversy, then we ought to say that the key ideas Sen used in his writings probably different mean different things to the critiques. In other words, there is a problem of understanding about Sen’s famine philosophy. This is the approach I would like to take in reviewing his controversial famine analysis.

 I intend to frame my review under two headings: (i) Understanding Sen’s interpretation of the traditional view about famine causation and (ii) understanding the entitlement approach to famine analysis.

 Although many intelligent academicians are overwhelmingly impressed by Sen’s articulation of his famine theory, I have recently come to think that we do not really know what Sen truly wants to say in his famine philosophy.

 I need to make a confession. I am not really a famine researcher. My research interests lie elsewhere. As mentioned before, I am a Bangladeshi by birth. Naturally, I got interested in Sen’s works to know this fellow Bengali better, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 1998. My casual interests in his contributions turned into a kind of academic curiosity, when I read his writings on famines in Bengal and Bangladesh. I was also able to write a paper that the Journal of Development Studies kindly published in 2006. Since then, I did not write anything on Sen’s famine analysis.

 However, my original impressions have changed and I seem to be more confident that we need to study seen from different perspectives. First, we need to study Sen more from conceptual than analytical perspectives. In this analysis, experience and observation should play a greater role compared to statistics. Second, Sen himself stated that he wants to rescue famine analysis from the narrower field of economics and juxtapose it in the complex ground of philosophy, politics and law. Perhaps I can travel this ground comfortably as I have read philosophy – moral, political and epistemology – for over a decade.

 Hope to develop my ideas gradually over the year.

 Elahi,

Sen's famine philosophy seems fitting to the "taim hangre" ( a seasonal period of food shortage) situation in Papua New Guinea. This phenomenon was elaborately studied by Dr. Micheal Bourke (of ANU). Although the cause(s) of this phenomenon is multifaceted, the primary driving force is anthropogenic in nature.

Thanks Tom:

Everyone interested in famine seems to interpret Sen's thesis in way they understand it. Sen is a gifted writer. He can produce volumes on any issue he chooses to deal with. However, ordinary readers might find it difficult to understand their intended meanings and messages.

I think that Sen's work revealed what people working in a more applied way on hunger said even before him: hunger is often the result of poverty than insuffieint food being produced. When the idea of food enttitlement decline came up, many I know said that this is little new, but obviously it was new in academia. The myths about hunger were taken up already by Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins in 1977. Also in many NGOs working in the fields of food security the idea that hunger and also starvation is caused by poverty was not entirely new. Beyond that, of course, one can only establish command over food that is there, so the supply side is not entirely out, but food security is a combination of the supply and demand side of food.

Lappe, F. M., Collins, J., & Fowler, C. (1977). Food first. Beyond the myth of scarcity. Houghton Mifflin Co..

Lappé, F. M., & Collins, J. (1986). World hunger: Twelve myths.