"…democracy can serve to enhance the political attention that vulnerable people get. The rulers have to listen to expressions of needs, frustrations, complaints that people may have …
… This is one reason why no substantial famine has ever occurred in a democratic country. For one thing elections are not easy to win after a famine. Famines have, thus been confined to countries governed by colonial rulers, by one-party regimes, or by military dictators."
Professor Amartya Sen
Nobel Prize Winning Indian Economist,
1981
