In a shocking bit of disinformation which spread like wildfire over social media circles on Tuesday afternoon with a section of the mainstream media initially falling for it and then eventually retracting the fake news, Nobel Laureate economist Professor Amartya Sen was declared dead when the Bharat Ratna awardee was all hale and hearty and engrossed in what he does best… pursue academics.
The confusion spread from an unverified X handle post, purportedly belonging to economic historian and this year’s Nobel Laureate Claudia Goldin, where she shared “terrible news”. The account was later found to be a hoax and seemingly unrelated to Goldin.
A section of mainstream media in India -- not The Telegraph Online -- had caught on to that information and quoted Goldin’s purported post to publish the false information. While some outlets retracted the news with confirmation on 89-year-old Sen’s health status coming in, others left the disinformation untouched at the time this report was filed.
The disinformation, needless to say, had initially sent shockwaves across Sen’s family, friends and other countless admirers across the globe until, thankfully, the truth came to light.
Sen’s daughter and an actor-cum-activist in her own right, Nandana Dev Sen, scampered to put out the correct information on her social media platform. “Friends, thanks for your concern but it’s fake news: Baba is totally fine. We just spent a wonderful week together w/ family in Cambridge—his hug as strong as always last night when we said bye! He is teaching 2 courses a week at Harvard, working on his gender book—busy as ever!" she posted on her X timeline alongside a picture of the economist.
“Deleting tweet on Amartya Sen based on a post from an unverified account in the name of Claudia Goldin. Actor Nandana Dev Sen denies news of death of her father, Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen," news agency PTI posted on X soon after.
During an extensive career spanning nearly seven decades, Sen’s contributions to numerous fields of welfare economics and social choice theory, economic and social justice and public health have proved seminal in determining public policies in developing nations of the world. The academic is currently a professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University and spearheads the Pratichi Trust which was set up in 1999 with his Nobel Prize money and conducts research on combating illiteracy and lack of schooling in India, the lack of basic health care, and the special disadvantages from which women and young girls suffer.
“People have given up hope that I might retire. But I like working, I must say. I’ve been very lucky. I’ve never done, when I think about it, work that I was not interested in. That is a very good reason to go on," Sen had told The Harvard Gazette in 2021.
Sen received the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998 for his work on understanding poverty. In the ensuing years he was awarded top civilian honours from around the world, including the Bharat Ratna and France's Légion d’Honneur. He holds more than 100 honorary degrees from institutions on five continents and even received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Harvard Law School in 2000.
