Shadowing Practice: Amartya Sen interview (1999) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Mark Yassin is the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics.
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He was given the award for "restoring an ethical dimension to
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the discussion of economic problems." His writings have revolutionized the theory of development by focusing on the importance of freedom over wealth.
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In his new book, "Development as Freedom," he allows economics to address the social basis of the well -being of the individual.
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I am pleased to have him on this broadcast as we
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always are to have someone here who brings piercing insight into issues
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that are part of not only the discussion in the United States, but the world.
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Welcome.
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Thank you very much.
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This notion of how you feel about markets.
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and democracy, and how you feel about growth economics, working best in an economic environment that is,
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in a political environment that's a democracy, or a political environment that is a totalitarian.
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Stay.
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Yes, well I think what I'd like to think of in this context is to go with behind the institutions and
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The main approach, which actually the book also does pursue,
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is that the very basic thing which leads to social change and progress is ultimately individual freedom.
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But individual freedom, of course, is also conditional on certain social opportunities being available, political opportunities, economic opportunities.
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And my claim is that the freedoms of different kinds complement each other, just as I was mentioning in the case of the rise.
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a communal riot, so people didn't have economic freedom, had to go into hostile area and got killed.
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So economic freedom gives you more liberty there also.
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Similarly, I think political freedom gives voice.
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democracy, civil rights, open media, public discussion like we are having now, gives voice to the people who are deprived.
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And you make the point.
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Well taken, it seems, that at a time of a famine,
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A democracy is more likely to put a break on a famine than a totalitarian state.
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It's not only more likely, that's radically so.
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There has never been a famine in a democratic country, even very poor ones, like Zimbabwe, Botswana, India.
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India continues to have famine, right up to independence, which is the last one that occurred, which I saw as a child I was mentioning.
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But if you look at the famines today, they're all in countries that are totalitarian.
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Well, if you think of North Korea, Sudan, if you think of the past, the biggest famine in record history, China, 58, 61, 30 million people dead.
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Soviet Union in the 1930s, military dictatorship, one kind or another,
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Ethiopia, Somalia, Mozambique, Angola, one after another.
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And it happens because in a democracy the protest, the public voice would not allow and tolerate.
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Yeah, I would say that there are two things.
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You may be very lucky and may have no democracy and still have no famine.
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But if a famine were to develop, democracy provides a guarantee for stopping it because famines are extremely easy to stop.
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And this was one of my earlier works.
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I did a book.
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published in 1981 called Poverty and Famines, showing why famines occur because of really decline on the fortunes of a very small group of people,
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maybe millions, but still proportionately very small.
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And you can very easily stop it, even without getting any kind of assistance from abroad.
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And if a government has an incentive to do it, it can always stop a famine extremely easily.
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So that led to the second part.
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How can it do it if it has an incentive?
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Well, if it doesn't have an incentive, then it couldn't do it.
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But what I was saying that if it did have an incentive to do it, then it can carry it out very easily.
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So the economic analysis led me to the political one, and it was quite clear that in a democracy, if you have to fight another election,
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and not like being criticized by opposition parties, and not like being hoisted up by newspapers and the media,
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you would actually do something about preventing famines and that's extremely easy to do.
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And that's why, you know, even though China was in many ways doing better than India right from the beginning, from the middle of the century,
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nevertheless, India was much better able to stop famine than China
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because when the famine occurred
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and about 10 million people were dying in China each year through that period after the Great Leap Forward failed,
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there was no criticism of the government.
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People didn't even know that people were dying in such numbers.
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We now know from demographic statistics of the Chinese themselves.
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Another aspect of this, obviously, which you have talked about, and written about is whether you look at Singapore as one example, Yes.
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economic growth and a different political structure.
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And then you look at some democracies likewise in Africa, where the most progressive economic growth is taking place in a democratic establishment.
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So what rule do we bring out of that?
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I think those who have studied these kind of issues like Robert Barrow, my old colleague from Harvard and others,
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Przorsky, Limogier and others, find that actually as far as economic growth is concerned, there is no connection one way or the other very much about democracy.
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It's much more concerned with the friendliness of the economic climate rather than harshness of the political climate.
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development in terms of human security, then I think democracy has a role.
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I mean, one good example would be that East Asian, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Southeast Asia,
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they were all doing terribly well, and people somehow didn't miss democracy at that time when everything seemed to be going up and up together.
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and the absence of a democracy were badly felt.
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And naturally in South Korea and Indonesia, these became the big moments of democratic movement, and not surprisingly at all.
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Explain this to me and you will understand this much better.
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And I've never quite understood the reasons why.
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Here in this United States, we have a booming stock market We're creating enormous wealth for certain
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percentage of people The notion is that the rising tide raises all boats,
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Yet we have a growing disparity between wealthy and poor.
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An income inequality.
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How is that possible.
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Charlie, can I go beyond that?
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Yes.
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There is not only income inequality, that could be bad enough.
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But I think that's not where the real problem is.
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The real problem is the inequality of basic freedom to live in a way that you would like to live.
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And that includes living long, living a life without illnesses, living in a peaceful, happy surrounding, and so on.
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And if you think about that, you see the lack of health care in the United States, the lack of insurance about health care, despite the richness of the country,
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I mean it's coming back to the political discussion right now, it's actually a little scandalous.
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You know, whether 43 million people not having medical insurance, whether that's an exaggeration or not, certainly a very large number of people are.
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And sometimes it's our good, but in fact it doesn't make any difference.
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But if you look at the mortality differences between different regions of the country, and between different classes, and and between different races.
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African Americans, for example, as a group, have a lower chance of reaching any kind of age beyond 15 than the Chinese
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or the Indians in Kerala or Sri Lankans and so on.
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And why is that?
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Well, I think to some extent, lack of medical insurance plays a part.
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Educational failure plays a part.
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And sometimes it's thought that this is all connected with violence.
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And indeed, that some violence is high and that's also a social malaise.
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And family structure and lots of other things.
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Actually, in the book I study and go beyond that, even if you take beyond the age of 35, then death from violence is no longer a factor.
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And look at women, you see similar deprivation.
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And the overall impact is just radically...
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different from what the picture on income comparison would look like.
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That is, if you take the African American, It's quite often said African Americans are relatively deprived compared with American whites.
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But they're not absolutely deprived, nor are they relatively deprived compared to the third world.
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Now that's true in terms of income.
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They may have income 30, 40 times, the Chinese or the Indian.
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On the other hand, The life expectancy of African Americans in this city, in New York, or in San Francisco,
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or in Washington, is several years lower than that in India or Pakistan on an average. And
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if you took those - The life expectancy in the inner
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city of New York in many cases is lower than that of - African American, I'm talking about.
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Male African American.
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Yeah.
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And the male African American rates are very low, like 58 years.
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that's dramatically low in comparison with income.
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And you have to ask the question, what's gone wrong?
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And I think here, it's not just a question of having a democracy, but also what kind of issues could be forcefully practiced.
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That's why I'm so delighted that to some extent this issue is returning back into American electoral politics.
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Because without that, you won't have any change, really.
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Because I think the - I thought that in the discussion of both Gore and Bradley,
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at least it's...
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You're right, it is.
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Senator Bradley is trying to raise...
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Senator Bradley is trying to raise this as an issue...
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I'm meeting at one occasion, I must say, I greatly admire him.
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I think it's wonderful if he can bring those issues into the story.
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But you know, each area, it's peculiar.
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In Europe, you could not have survived with the kind of healthcare situation.
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No government would have the chance of winning an election.
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Mr. All right, but that's what I want to get at too, because for a second, if you look at the economics and the reality of healthcare and those kinds of numbers,
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rather than income equality, it's much more dramatic and blatant and powerful. as a condition.
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Yeah.
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Why do you think, even though you're expertise in your scholarly work is economics and not politics.
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Why do you think the body politic allows that in this country?
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I would like to believe, naively, that we are a good people who care about our neighbors.
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Well, I think that's an extremely interesting question, and you're quite right.
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As an economist, I hesitate to speak on it.
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But I must say, political analysis of it.
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requires to go much deeper into this because there are peculiar arbitrariness.
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In America, you can get by without health insurance being a political issue in the way you can't in Europe.
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In Europe, you can get by with double -digit unemployment levels, which no US government could have survived on.
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In India, you cannot to have a famine, but you can survive with a regular undernourishment of a kind which is very peculiarly strong.
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You could get away with it, and you change it.
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You could get away in India on gender inequality.
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It wasn't politicized, but thanks to the feminist movements and others now, and a general political change,
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women's inequality has become a big politicized issue.
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So I think it's a question of really
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the opportunity of the political leadership and the vision of the political leadership to see some of these issues.
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And I think if the medical care issue is strongly politicised, I think you'd get the kind of response that you would get in Europe.
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And that's why I remain ultimately very hopeful on that.
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But you can't really do a certain change without at the same time affecting public opinion and public discussion.
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MR. And then you can get to the interesting debate on how to do something about it.
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And therefore, honorable people can differ.
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over how to treat the illness, but once they've got to make a commitment that there ought to be, It's unacceptable.
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- Yes.
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in terms of healthcare, in terms of education, in terms of children's nutrition, in terms of all those things, that affect - Yes, absolutely.
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And I think there's no substitute to having active public discussion.
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I mean, so far as my book is trying to do anything, it's trying to draw public attention to certain things which we do know on the basis of economic, political, social analysis.
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And its bearing and development is interpreted here very widely.
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It applies to America, it applies to Europe, as well as to India and China and Africa and Latin America.
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discussion, which is really the main thing
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that the book is trying to present in terms of identifying the various kinds of unfreedom.
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It could be political unfreedom, it could be social opportunity unfreedom, and so on.
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MR. Development as freedom.
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There are many people I know.
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who I respect and admire for their achievements, who believe that Freedom and free markets are one and the same thing.
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I think that's just nonsense.
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I mean, free markets are quite an important contribution to development.
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I mean, even somebody like Karl Marx in the capital thought
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that the American Civil Wars was the most important event of his time, on grounds that it got people out of slavery into a market economy,
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into a great economy.
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And yet, you need to supplement the market economy by so many other things, democracy, democracy.
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public expenditure.
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Great guru of market economy, Adam Smith, goes on and on on the need for public education, need for poverty relief, in fact.
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So I think in many ways one has to place the market economy - Thank you.
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as one institutional aspect of a multi -institutional world.
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And anyone who wants to identify free market with freedom is as mistaken as someone who would take the view
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that you can dispense with market in the pursuit of freedom.
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You need to see it in a much wider context.
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I fear asking this, but I'm tempted to anyway, and generally I follow temptation.
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What's the best idea you ever had?
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Thank you.
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Oh, good God.
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I don't know.
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I think probably some of the ideas that I would be more pleasantly, rather more technical than easy to discuss.
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I mentioned that the novella was connected with social choice theory.
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There were issues of aggregation and so on, and there were these.
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Kenneth Arrow had an impossibility theorem showing why you cannot and your decision leads to inconsistencies.
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And really the hard work to a great extent was how you can broaden the informational input into the social analysis.
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I think to some extent that has played a part in all these things.
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The need to have a much wider informational structure to know much more, not just one small thing,
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not just income, but also how people's lives go, their health care, their educational arraignment, these turn out to be quite crucial in both the technical
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mathematical problems in dealing with impossibility as well as in terms
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of public discussion problems in making a change in the world in which we actually live.
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These ideas and others are discussed in this book, Development is Freedom, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics.
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Thank you for joining us.
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See you next time.
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Bye.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will practice your English speaking skills by listening to an insightful interview with Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. The discussion focuses on pivotal concepts such as individual freedom, democracy, and economic opportunities, providing a rich context for vocabulary development and comprehension. By shadowing Sen’s articulate speech, you will enhance your ability to express complex ideas, improve your English pronunciation, and gain a deeper understanding of economic theories and their implications in society.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Nobel Prize - An international award given annually in several categories, notably in economics.
- Economic freedom - The ability to control one’s own economic resources, facilitating personal choice and prosperity.
- Democracy - A political system in which the population has a voice in government decisions, often through voting.
- Famine - An extreme scarcity of food that leads to widespread hunger and is often linked to political and economic factors.
- Political opportunities - The availability of options in governance that allow individuals to influence decisions and policies.
- Social change - Significant alterations in social structures and norms over time.
- Public voice - The collective opinion and expression of the population in societal matters.
- Incentive - A motivating factor that encourages a particular action or behavior, especially in a political context.
Practice Tips
To maximize your english speaking practice with this video, consider the following suggestions for effective shadowing:
- Slow down the playback speed. Start by listening to the interview at a reduced speed to better grasp Sen's precise diction and tone. This will aid in mimicking his pronunciation more effectively.
- Focus on intonation and emotion. Pay attention to how Sen emphasizes specific points. Try to reproduce not only the words but also the emotional undertones in his speech for a more engaging learning experience.
- Practice in segments. Break the video into smaller sections. Repeat each segment multiple times to cement your understanding and improve your fluency. This is especially useful for phrases that may be challenging.
- Record yourself. Use your device to record your shadow speech. Listening back will provide insights into areas where you can improve your english pronunciation and delivery.
- Engage with the content. After shadowing, summarize key points in your own words. This will reinforce your understanding and allow you to practice constructing sentences relevant to the discussion.
By engaging in these practice methods, you can enhance your shadowspeak skills, allowing for smoother communication and comprehension in English. Make this learning process enjoyable and rewarding!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was given · are deprived · being criticized |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who are · independence, which is · those who have |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have revolutionized · has never been · have talked |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.