Sen’s work (1999) had a huge influence on the establishment of a new paradigm in the early 2000s. Social facilities should aim to provide opportunities that increase the well-being of the population. Sen asserts societal arrangements should be investigated “in terms of their contribution to enhancing and guaranteeing the substantive freedoms of individuals, seen as active agents of change rather than as passive recipients of dispensed benefits” (Sen 1999:xii).

Social facilities involve institutions such as the state and the market. These, he argues, need to be interconnected. Sen focuses on crucial instrumental freedoms: economic opportunities, political freedoms, social facilities, transparency guarantees and protective security. He argues for the removal of these major factors. “Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency” (Sen 1999:xii). Sen defines the major factors that limit freedom as ‘poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or over activity of repressive states” (Sen 1999:1). If pursuing freedom-for-all is about expanding citizens’ capabilities, the focus should not be exclusively on making up for what people lack (Reid-Henry 2012). His approach focuses on human flourishing as the entry point to the problem of poverty and global inequality rather than economic growth (Reid-Henry 2012). Sen (1999) contends that all human beings are equally entitled to enjoy a life that they value. He makes it clear that previous strategies to reduce these catastrophes are erroneous.

Sen alerts the reader that poverty, unfulfilled elementary needs, the occurrence of famines, the violation of political freedoms and neglect of the agency of women remain today despite ‘unpredented opulence’ (1999). However, he recognises that increase of income alone “has at best uneven and at worst has detrimental impacts on the majority of a country’s population, and radical redistributive measures are necessary for the poor to benefit from growth” (Selwyn 2011:69). Sen does acknowledge that increases in poor people’s incomes do contribute to the expansion of their freedoms. Sen challenges the mainstream concept of measuring development by economic growth (Evans 2002). He argues that human development is about the expansion of citizens capabilities.įor Sen, freedom means increasing citizens access and opportunities to the things they have reason to value. Amartya Sen’s concept of Development As Freedom (1999) is highly acclaimed.

Development according to amartya sen