CONCEPT
The Entitlement Approach
Sen's demonstration, developed through his analysis of the Bengal famine of 1943, that catastrophes of deprivation result not from resource scarcity but from the failure of institutional mechanisms that determine who has access to resources that exist.
The entitlement approach is Sen's analytical framework for understanding famines and other catastrophes of deprivation. Developed through his empirical study of the Bengal famine of 1943, it demonstrates that such catastrophes typically result not from absolute scarcity of the relevant resource but from the collapse of the institutional and economic mechanisms — entitlements — that determine who can access the resource that exists. Bengal had enough food in 1943. People starved because wartime inflation, speculative hoarding, distribution failures, and the suppression of the free press had destroyed the entitlements through which laborers and rural workers could convert their labor or income into food. The insight extends with uncomfortable precision to the AI transition.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Sen's empirical work on Bengal overturned the conventional explanation of famine as a Malthusian shortage. The food existed. What failed was the distribution system — the complex of wages, prices, property rights, governmental