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less when a crisis hits. different groups can have very divergent predicaments. United we may
be when we go up and up and up. but divided we fall when we do fall. The false sense of
harmony may be torn severely asunder when things start unravelling and coming down.

The issue of divisiveness of downturns (even when upturns are harmonious) is one
of the central lessons to emerge from the study of crises often much more catastrophic than
those that East and South-East Asia have recently experienced. Even when a terrible famine

occurs. it may be a situation in which most groups of people in that country have no difficulty
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whatsoever in getting enough to eat. A famine rearly affects more than 5 percent of the
population and almost never more than 10 percent. That is one reason why famines cannot
really be analyzed helpfully in aggregative terms neither in terms of total food supply. nor in
terms of average GNP or GDP per head. The Focus of causal analysis has to be the respective
entitlements of different groups of people their particular and specific abilities to buy food

and other necessities and to save themselves from sudden deprivation. The entitlements of
some groups can collapse severely even when other groups have only mild problems or even
remian quite unharmed and unaffected.

Exactly the same thing applies in a crisis like the one that hit East and South East
Asia two years ago. even though the extent of deprivation was far from that of a famine or a
massive disaster. Take. for example. the crises in Indonesia. or the Thailand. and earlier on. in
South Korea. It may be wondered why should it be so disastrous to have. say. a 5 or 10 percent
fall in gross national product in one year when the country in question has been growing at 5

to 10 percent per year for decades. Indeed. at the purely aggregate level this is not a disastrous
situation. And yet. if that 5 or 10 percent decline is not shared evenly by the population. and
if it is heaped instead largely on the poorest part of the population (the jobless and the
marginalized. and their families). then that group may have very little income left (no matter
what the overall growth performance might have been in the past). Thia is why "protective
security" is such an important instrumental freedom. and why social arrangements for safety
nets are an integral part of a good economy.

Growth with Equity Contrasted with Security
In this context. there is an important need to think of equity and economic in-
equality in quite a different way in the context of security from the way they are standardly
treated in the development literature in the context of long run growth. In an obvious sense.
the problem of contrasting predicaments is. of course. one of inequality. There is clearly much
inequality when one group falls to pieces while other groups do just fine; this reflects. in an

obvious sense. a violation of equity. But it is important to recognise that this is not the same

90n this see my Poverty' and Famines : An Essay' on Entitlement and DeRrivation (Oxford : Clarendon Press.
1981), and jointly with Jean Dreze. Hunger and Public Action (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1989).