Explain Amartya sen's concept of “capabilities”. Why does he prefer to conceptualise poverty in term of capability deprivation rather than simply income or wealth deprivation?

 

Sen defines capabilities as "the freedom that a person has in terms of the choice of functionings, given his personal features (conversion of characteristics into functionings) and his command over commodities." Sen's perspective helps explain why development has placed so much emphasis on health and education, and more recently on social inclusion and empowerment, and has referred to countries with high levels of income but poor health and education standards as cases of "growth without development." Real income is essential, but to convert the characteristics of commodities into functionings, in most important cases, surely requires health and education as well as income. The role of health and education ranges from something so basic as the nutritional advantages and greater personal energy that are possible when one lives free of parasites to the expanded ability to appreciate the richness of human life that comes with a broad and deep education. People living in poverty are often deprived-at times deliberately of capabilities to make substantive choices and to take valuable actions, and often the behavior of the poor can be understood in that light.

 

For Sen, human "well-being" means being well, in the basic sense of being healthy, well nourished, well clothed, literate, and long-lived, and more broadly, being able to take part in the life of the community, being mobile, and having freedom of choice in what one can become and can do.