Sen's entitlements approach has attracted much attention and imitation, including attempted extensions beyond its original context in the explanation of famines. The article also argues that by undermining the politico-administrative dynamics of the famine, and by applying his entitlement approach only half-heartedly in examining it, Sen somewhat trivialises the sufferings of a famine-affected population under a corrupt and inefficient political regime. This article argues that Noble Laureate economist Amartya Sen's seminal analysis of the 1974 Bangladesh famine on the basis of his ‘entitlement approach’ fails to capture most of these circumventing factors. Evidence suggests that the 1974 famine was caused by successive onslaughts of natural disasters such as floods and droughts, and man-made disasters such as the government's inability to import foods, the directing of subsidised food to the politically vocal urban population, an abrupt fall in food aid and political and administrative corruption that encouraged massive hoarding and the smuggling of food grain. While the government succeeded in averting a widely predicted famine in the first case, it failed to prevent an actual famine in the later case when such a cataclysmic disaster was least anticipated. Bangladesh confronted two formidable food crises in 19.
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