In this latest publication, Professor Amartya Sen sets out to debunk an accepted doctrine in national and international food policy with his well-known talent for logical analysis, factual home-work and clarity of exposition.
The doctrine he deals with is the explanation of famines and starvation in terms of food availability decline or what he calls FAD. Both academic and popular opinion share the belief that it is a decline in the food availability per capita that brings about starvation and famines. Sen projects a different view in these words:
The FAD approach gives little clue to the causal mechanism of starvation, since it does not go into the relationship of people to food. Whatever may be the oracular power of the FAD view, it is certainly Delphic in its reticence.
January 1983, volume 8, No 4