London: India-born Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen's most ambitious new book, The Idea of Justice, an attempt to understand what a more just world might be like by citing contrasting instances from Kerala and Bihar, is all set to be published.
A substantial section of The Idea of Justice which will be published by the end of this month, is taken up with refuting the conclusions of increasingly influential left-of-centre economists who, while non-institutionalists, have what Sen sees as a limited view of human needs.
Sen who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998 for his contribution to welfare economics, told the Guardian "the problem with happiness as sole measure is that you may think yourself happy, but in fact be stymied."
"You may indeed adjust to your deprivation, as some slaves might have been happier on the plantation than free in the difficult outside world."
In his book, Sen instances the contrast between the Indian states of Kerala and Bihar. In Kerala morbidity is lower but concerns about morbidity are higher. Ideas and education that help to reduce morbidity in Kerala make the population more aware of it, so ignorance is bliss of a kind.
And the notion of income inequality being per se almost the sole measure of justice is problematic too. "These statistics have all kinds of impurities. If you're asked how happy are you, the answer is exactly informative as to what you would say if somebody asked you how happy you are."
It doesn't tell anyone whether you're really happy or not. People can get very discontented when they're very successful. And the sad thing is that people actually do adjust if they're very deprived.
"I spent 15 years working on famine and it's amazing how happy famine victims are when they ultimately get a meal. But that doesn't mean people are generally more deprived than a famine victim have in a first meal," Sen was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
Sen's revolutionary idea is that of capability, the capacity that people have for living and choosing how to live a good life. A good idea of justice concerns enhancing capability.
"Take deprived women in a very gender-unequal society. They have less right to go to school and less interest in their well-being," Sen added.
One of the early works I did was connected with the Bombay Hospital, where the hospital statistics suggested that the girls were much more ill than the boys, because they were brought into the hospital only when they were more ill than the boys were and that was because there was much more concern with the boys' health, Sen said.
"Sometimes you even, as a girl, get persuaded that it's a natural arrangement, it has always gone on."
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