The Political Economy of Hunger

513 Pages·2009·3.74 MB·English

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF HUNGER
WIDER
StudiesinDevelopmentEconomicsembodytheoutputoftheresearchprogrammesoftheWorldInstituteforDevelopment
Economics Research (WIDER), which was established by the United Nations University as its first research and
training centre in 1984 and started work in Helsinki in 1985. The principal purpose of the Institute is to help identify
and meettheneed for policy-oriented socio-economicresearch onpressing globaland developmentproblems, as well
as common domestic problems and their interrelationships.
The Political Economy of Hunger
Edited by
JEAN DRÈZE AND AMARTYA SEN
Volume 1
Entitlement and Well-Being
CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD
This page intentionally left blank
GreatClarendonStreet,OxfordOX26DP
OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford.
ItfurtherstheUniversity'sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship,
andeducationbypublishingworldwidein
OxfordNewYork
AucklandCapeTownDar esSalaamHongKongKarachi
KualaLumpurMadridMelbourneMexicoCityNairobi
NewDelhiShanghaiTaipeiToronto
Withofficesin
ArgentinaAustriaBrazilChileCzechRepublicFranceGreece
GuatemalaHungaryItalyJapanSouthKoreaPolandPortugal
SingaporeSwitzerlandThailandTurkeyUkraineVietnam
Oxfordisaregisteredtrademark ofOxfordUniversityPress
intheUK andincertainothercountries
PublishedintheUnitedStates
byOxfordUniversityPressInc., NewYork
©TheUnitedNationsUniversity1990
Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted
DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker)
Reprinted2007
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,
storedinaretrievalsystem,or transmitted,inanyform orbyanymeans,
withoutthepriorpermissioninwriting ofOxfordUniversityPress,
oras expresslypermittedbylaw, or under termsagreedwiththeappropriate
reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction
outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,
OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove
Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover
Andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer
ISBN978-0-19-828635-6
This page intentionally left blank
In fond memory of Sukhamoy Chakravarty
FOREWORD
The first fruits of WIDER's programme in the theme area of ‘Hunger and Poverty—The Poorest Billion’ initiated in
1985 were presented in August 1986 at a research conference in Helsinki on ‘Food Strategies’. The research was co-
ordinated by WIDER's Research Adviser on this theme, Amartya Sen, now Lamont University Professor at Harvard
University. The focus of the research project was on identifying ‘what feasible opportunities exist’ for changing a
situation where inordinately large numbers of people go hungry.
A common background to many of the papers presented at the conference was provided by an approach that sees
famine and hunger as arising not primarily from a lack of availabilityof food but from failure of entitlement to food.
Another key focus of theconferencewas on thepublic interventionissue, namely, howdoes a country with a low per
capita incomereachhighlevelsofphysicalqualityof lifeinterms of literacyrates, lifeexpectancy, and infantmortality.
Besides the country studies, other issues addressed in the research include strategies of famine prevention,
international interdependence, gender inequalities, the role of food production, and the functions of an active press.
Theconferencepapershavebeenbroughttogether inthreevolumes, editedbyJeanDrèzeandAmartyaSen,ofwhich
this is the first. In addition to editing these three volumes, Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen have themselves written a
separate monograph entitled Hunger and Public Action (Oxford University Press, 1989), which closely relates to the
themes and concerns of this book.
Lal Jayawardena
Director, WIDER
August 1989
PREFACE
This collection of twenty-six papers, presented in three volumes, represents the result of work undertaken at and for
the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) in Helsinki. This programme of joint research
was initiated inthesummer of1985. Thefirstversionsofmostofthepapers were presented at a WIDER conference
on ‘food strategies’ held in Helsinki in July 1986. The papers as well as the research programme as a whole were
subjected to close scrutiny at that conference. Those discussions strongly influenced the work that followed—both
extensive revisions of the papers presented and the undertaking of new studies, which are also included in these
volumes.
The objective of this programme has been the exploration of a wide range of issues related to hunger in the modern
world.The papers are concernedwithdiagnosis and causal analysis as wellas policyresearch. Thefocus is particularly
onAfricaand Asia,butthereare alsotwopapersonhungerand deprivationinLatinAmericaand a fewcontributions
on more general theoretical issues. The full list of papers in the three volumes can be found at the beginning of each
volume. Our ‘Introduction’ to the three volumes, discussing the papers and their interrelations, is included in full in
volume1,butthepartsrelevantfor thesubsequentvolumesarealsoincluded intherespectivevolumes,i.e.volumes2
and 3.
The tasks of revising the papers and carrying out the follow-up studies proved to be quite challenging, and the entire
project has taken much longer than we had hoped. We are extremely grateful to the authors for their willingness to
undertake substantial—and in some cases several rounds of—revisions, and for putting up with long lists of
suggestions and requests. The revisions have been enormously helped by the contributions of the discussants who
participated in the ‘food strategies’ conference in July 1986, including Surjit Bhalla, Susan George, Keith Griffin, S.
Guhan, Iftekhar Hussain, Nurul Islam, Nanak Kakwani,Robert Kates, Qaiser Khan, HenockKifle, Stephen Marglin,
Siddiq Osmani, Martin Ravallion, Sunil Sengupta, Mahendra Shah, Nick Stern, Paul Streeten, Megan Vaughan, and
Samuel Wangwe. Carl Eicher's comments and suggestions contributed greatly to the improvement of a number of
papers. Very helpful comments and suggestions were also received after the conference from Sudhir Anand, Susan
George, Judith Heyer, Nurul Islam, Robert Kates, B. G. Kumar, and François-Régis Mahieu.
For their participation in the conference, and their help in planning these studies, we are also grateful to Frédérique
Apffel-Marglin, Juha Ahtola, Tuovi Allén, Lars-Erik Birgegaard, Pekka Harttila, Cynthia Hewitt de Alcantara, Eric
Hobsbawm, Charles Kindleberger, Michael Lipton, Kaarle Norden