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If I am hopeful about the future, it is because I see the increasingly vocal demand for democracy in the world and the growing understanding of the need for social justice. Democracy is recovering some of its lost ground in Asia, Latin America and even Africa. Gender equity and basic education are beginning to receive more attention in India, Bangladesh and elsewhere. I am not unconditionally hopeful, but certainly conditionally so. We must, however, take a sufficiently broad view of poverty to make sure the poor have reason for hope.
Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998. His most recent book is Development as Freedom