Noble Prize Winner: Amartya Sen
Truly speaking only two Indians, born in India won the Noble prize before Amartya Sen who won it in 1998. The first Indian to win the Noble prize was Rabindranath Tagore, who won it in 1913 and C.V. Raman who won it in 1930. We also consider Mother Teresa as an Indian Noble prize winner though she was born in Albania.
Amartya Sen was born in 1933 at Shantiniketan (Bengal). However, he spent his early life in England and America. He became a professor at the age of 29. He taught at some of the best universities like Oxford and Harvard. Now he is the Master of Trinity College. He was awarded Noble Prize in Economic Sciences, in 1998.
 Though he is a westernized Indian, he has not forgotten his motherland. He has retained his Indian citizenship. He visits Shantiniketan every winter. He moved around in his 50-year-old Philips bicycle, he meets friends and goes about the town.
Sen was only nine when he saw the Bengal famine in 1943. He was rudely shocked to see deaths in the streets. This famine did not result from natural causes or scarcity of food. It was an administrative and social failure. The agricultural produce of Bengal had been sent to Britain because of war by Churchill. Sen made it the mission of life to understand inequality. He thinks that economics is meaningless if it is not based on moral values. His economics is welfare economics. His remedy to India’s ills is an investment in primary education. The politicians are not interested in these things. lie thinks that the basic problem in India is that the government has failed to take adequate action in expanding education, public health care, land reform and social security.
Many people say that Amartya Sen has nothing new to say. He has been repeating the same things over the last twenty years. But Sen says that he would continue to repeat them as long as social, political and economic inequality are not given the proper attention.
We all are feeling a sense of great pride that another Indian has won the Noble prize. The Government of India has decided to confer on him the highest honour — Bharat Ratna. The best honour to him will be when the government and society pay heed to what he has been saying again and again.
