Amartya Kumar Sen is the first man since Adam Smith to hold professorships in bothEconomics and Philosophy at Harvard University.Growing up in Dhaka during the 1943 Bengalfamine, Sen was drawn towards his future avocation, exploring the many hues of therelation between society and the individual which determine freedom of choice or the lackof it. His vast body of work—"an attempt to follow the leadership of the morephilosophical rather than the more engineering school of Economics"—stretchesfrom causes of famine and poverty, to equality and gender, East-West relations, andepistemology and the philosophy of justice. The youngest ever to become a professor (at23), Sen today remains an Indian citizen, though never a member of government committees,never hesitating to take a stand on Ayodhya, or criticise liberalisation for bypassing thepoor. And the Nobel? That’s an honour which, if it comes, will make the man who oncespelt out his name as "S for somebody, E for everybody and N for nobody" veryuneasy indeed. As fellow economist and collaborator, Jean Dreze, feels, this freethinkingcolossus may not want to join the league of Chicago School right-wingers.
