Amartya Sen given UNESCAP Lifetime Achievement Award

New Delhi, Mar 29 (UNI) Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has been conferred with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Bangkok-based UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) as part of the organisation's 60th anniversary commemoration.

Presenting the award at a ceremony in Bangkok yesterday, UNESCAP executive secretary Kim Hak-Su described Prof Sen ''as a citizen of the Asian and Pacific region,'' and said the ESCAP 60th Anniversary Lifetime Achievement Award is a symbol of our immense pride that a son of our region has risen to be an eminent citizen of the world.

Born in Shantiniketan, in 1933, Prof Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998, the only Asian till date to have been so honoured for his contributions to welfare economics. He is currently the Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at the Harvard University.

In the citation accompanying the award, UNESCAP notes that Prof Sen's writings, on social choice, welfare distribution, poverty, famines, democracy, individual freedom and human identify, ''have extended the frontiers of contemporary thinking on some of the most pressing issues'' facing the region, a UN inforamtion centre release today said.

''Prof Sen's seminal contributions have revolutionised contemporary thinking and profoundly affected the policies of the United Nations and countries across the globe,'' it said.

Preceding the presentation of the award, Prof Sen gave a special lecture to United Nations staff on the subject of ''Asian Immensities''.

Speaking to a packed conference hall, Prof Sen catalogued some of the contributions made by Asian civilisations to the world throughout the centuries, and many of the different ways in which Asians have learned from each other.

''We have reason to be proud of what we Asians have been able to do for ourselves and for world civilisation,'' he said adding that there is a lot to be done.

The celebration of the past achievements of Asia's parliamentary inclinations as well as its vast immensities is also a good moment to think of the future.

''But I would like to be able to say the best is yet come,'' he said.

UNI