The announcement of the prestigious prize referred to the contributions Professor Sen had made to welfare economics, which had helped in understanding the economic mechanisms underlying famines and poverty. was that something terrible had happened, but he became happy when it 'turned out to be good news'. His initial thought on being awakened around 5 a.m. He told a correspondent that he was informed of the award by an official of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences who had obtained his telephone number from his wife at Cambridge. The memorial will be held in the Economic and Social Council chamber at 10:45 a.m. He had arrived for a memorial lecture he would deliver at the United Nations on Thursday in honour of Mahbub ul Haq, a leading development thinker and creator of the widely acclaimed United Nations development programme Human Development Report. He learned of the award in New York early Wednesday morning. Professor Sen, who teaches at Trinity College in Cambridge, United Kingdom, was awarded the prize for his work on the causes of famine, on inequality and on measurement of poverty. Globalization should be placed in a broader context and should be seen in terms of social and economic policies taken together. Lack of social opportunities, such as literacy, good health care and macro-credit should be remedied.

A system of social safety nets would be needed, he said, adding that attention had to paid to that.

Even with the best scenario, there would be unexpected change, whether it arose from financial mismanagement or sudden changes in the world economy, and some people would suffer. On balance, he said, major gains could be made by globalization. Countries particularly threatened were those where human development had often been very poor. The main difficulty with globalization arose from failures in domestic policy, he said. Professor Amartya Sen, the Indian philosopher and economist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics, yesterday (14 October), said at a Headquarters press conference yesterday afternoon that globalization could be a major force for prosperity if adequately backed by good national policy. PRESS CONFERENCE BY NOBEL LAUREATE PROFESSOR AMARTYA SEN

Sen poverty and famines