From Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity brings together an illuminating selection of writings on contemporary India. India is an immensely diverse country with many distinct pursuits, vastly different convictions, widely divergent customs and a veritable feast of viewpoints. Out of these conflicting views spring a rich tradition of skeptical argument and cultural achievement which is critically important, argues Amartya Sen, for the success of India's democracy, the defence of its secular politics, the removal...

This major philosophical work, by one of the world's leading public intellectuals, constructs a new theory of justice, not from abstract ideals or notions of what perfect institutions and rules might be, but from what the results of a system are practically, in the world.

The author explains how, in a world of unprecedented increase in overall opulence, millions of people living in the Third World are still unfree. Even if they are not technically slaves, they are denied elementary freedoms and remain imprisoned in one way or another by economic poverty, social deprivation, political tyranny or cultural authoritarianism. The main purpose of development is to spread freedom and its thousand charms to the unfree citizens.

This book focuses on the causes of starvation in general and famines in particular. The traditional analysis of famines is shown to be fundamentally defective, and the author develops an alternative analysis.

This book brings together and develops some of the economic, social and ethical ideas explored since 1974. It examines the claims of equality in social arrangements, stressing that we should be concerned with peoples' capabilities rather than either their resources or their welfare. Sen also looks at some types of inequality that have been less systematically studied than those of class or wealth.