Economic Development - Book Report/Review Example

Add (Add (Add ‘Development as Freedom Book Review Amartya Sen, with his Cambridge scholastic excellence with an ethical angle of scientific evaluation of economics, has clearly visualized his emphatic wisdom for the reform of the world’s financial thoughts. The 1998 Nobel laureate of Indian origin has brought new schools of thoughts in the economic development policies as a relationship with liberty of individuals in political and civilian choices while citing examples from various Asian countries.

Sen’s work on “Development as Freedom” can only be seen as the encyclopedia of chronological events in the development of many countries after their collateral damages due to coercive social systems as well as authoritarian political administration. The book was made on the ground of studies required for the renaissance alarms in the events and their aftermath followed by continuous sessions of inflations and capital losses incurred by leading Asian economies like the Middle-East gulf countries and India as against the rise of China from the verge of total poverty.

Amartya Sen’s views of the aspect ‘freedom’ have been clearly explored throughout his logical analyses taking the support of various religious perspectives based on stories related to human needs and ends. More preferably, Sen notes that freedoms of different kinds in the social life not only bring development of living conditions, but also act as the means of most the reforms in socio-economic growth (11). The author’s candid style of linking the morals from great episodes of ancient Indian religious beliefs with the present day’s quest for uneven distributional proportion of fund-finding helps the reading easily accessible to the facts of the Asian economy.

‘Development of Freedom’ gives the most acceptable definition to the amount of emphasize on individual freedom required for the development in economic thoughts as a perspective from different angles of the society. Sen says that the application of social justice and various approaches of political philosophy in different informational bases have serious flaws if the priority is given for substantive individual freedoms in the development process (56). The author’s empirical views on importance of freedom to choose the value of life and the need for basic social and individual requirements such as education, primary health and information play the key role in the making of this great book.

Sen’s work suggests that, where the partial negligence of the changing governments and equal amount of ignorance among the individuals contribute to most of the relative economic slavery prevailing in Asian countries, the utilitarian tradition gave way to various compromises in relative indices of desires and optimum choices of individuals.Sen particularly focuses on importance of democracy on curbing the issues related to famine and other crises. In Chapter 6 and chapter 7, the author clearly reviews the scenarios related to the menaces of famine and other economics as a relative index of possibilities of expansion through the benefits of democracy.

The author, thereby strongly argues that freedom of expression through press and other open media caters much to the requirements of a fight against malnutrition, poverty and famines. A claim of inarguable feasibility of public message in working towards a better future in the Indian context is the mirror of his insight seen in this great work. He states that “a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have,” (181) and “potential famines have been prevented from occurring in India since independence” (169).

Overall, the book ‘Development as Freedom’ is a looking glass for the economists and research scholars for their exploration of their desired fields with a more spiritually fixed handle of ethics and emotions, rather than norms and notions generally ruled the concept of economics. On the other way, it may be said, that the book is first of its kind to hold a value of emotional and spiritual prominence of choices of individuals as a relationship with the macro-level analysis of the total economy of a region.

The book surely serves the worth of the author’s efforts for explaining most of the scenarios; however, the literature and the terminology applied in the description make the reading a real task for common readers. Works CitedSen, Amartya. Development as Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Print.