Poverty, Amartya Sen and Adam Smith

The hitherto known history of human civilization has been checkered with glorious achievements and abject injustice characterized by poverty, inequality and deprivation. The term poverty may be looked upon in both absolute and relative sense. The most coherent explanation of poverty and injustice is to be found in the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. They associated poverty and injustice with private property, division of labour, exchange, competition, family and the State.

The most prominent voice that has raised protests against blind adherence to free market mechanism is that of Amartya Sen who has emphasized that to contain the maladies associated with material progress in the era of globalization, public action is essential. Sen emphasizes the role of the mass media and awareness of the common people to break through this vicious circle and make the politicians, running the governments, work in a desirable fashion.

Unfortunately this optimistic note of Sen has come up against a serious hurdle pointed out by Adam Smith long ago. According to Smith a psychosis common to most of the people, whatever be their own positions, is that they admire the powerful and the rich (whatever be the means of their achievements) instead of the really worthy ones, viz. the honest and virtuous who has failed to achieve power and wealth. This has, in fact, spelt out a gloomy prospect for the human race.