There are various approaches to the development but for this assignment the main focus will be on Sen’s capability approach founded by an economist and philosopher named Amartya Kumar Sen who is the first South Asian economist to win the noble prize for economics in 1998 and he is from Bangladesh and a professor at Harvard university till 2004

There are various approaches to the development but for this assignment the main focus will be on Sen’s capability approach founded by an economist and philosopher named Amartya Kumar Sen who is the first South Asian economist to win the noble prize for economics in 1998 and he is from Bangladesh and a professor at Harvard university till 2004 (Alkire, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, n.d.). This approach is rooted from Adam smith, Karl Marx and also from Aristotle where this economist talks about the significance of functioning as the principle of welfare. It is embedded to human development.
Sen provide philosophical ideas and consider the development as freedom that is the ability or capability to choose what to be and do in order to achieve the value in their life, which is functioning. Sen believed that it’s not about allocating and providing resources, it’s about their abilities/capability to utilize the given resources (Burchardt, n.d.). For example the student with special need let’s say a blind student, can’t read books and write like an ordinary students given the resources so, they need distinct resources whereby it depend upon the individual ability given the same resources. This approach has helped in promoting equality and fairness of human right and this approach is both subjective and objective where it also helps in accessing to the resources in an efficient way (Burchardt, n.d.).
The criticism faced by this approach is due to the lack of directive and it’s a social evaluation whereby he fails to give quantity data to prove his work and his work is individualistic and idealistic in nature (Schokkaert, n.d.). Moreover there are many critique on this approach by Immanuel Kant and John Rawl but the major critique is drawn by Martha Nussbaum who provide capabilities based on Aristotelian view of “human flourishing” where Sen keeps on the democratic basis through public reasoning (Schokkaert, n.d.).
Therefore, Sen’s capability approach is a welfare economics which focuses on individual capability to function of doing and being in an effective way to gain utility. The approach focuses on distributive affect and reducing inequality among people resulting into development in an economy.