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Which Indian personality is the recipient of the Oxford University's Bodley Medal 2019?

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Amartya Sen’s work combines economics with moral philosophy, influencing both policy and academic thinking globally.
Updated On: Jul 15, 2026
  • Raghuram Rajan
  • Amartya Sen
  • Manmohan Singh
  • Shashi Tharoor
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The Correct Option is B

Approach Solution - 1

This question checks who among a group of well known Indian figures received a specific Oxford honour in 2019. Raghuram Rajan, Manmohan Singh and Shashi Tharoor are all respected in their own fields, economics, public service and literature, but none of them was given the Bodley Medal that year, so all three fail together.

The medal, awarded by Oxford's Bodleian Libraries for outstanding contribution to literature, culture or science, went to Amartya Sen in 2019, recognising his lifetime of work on welfare economics and famine studies.

So the correct answer is Amartya Sen.

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Approach Solution -2

Look at what actually connects these four names before picking an answer. Raghuram Rajan, Manmohan Singh and Amartya Sen all have backgrounds in economics, while Shashi Tharoor's is literature and diplomacy, so this cannot be settled purely by field.

  1. Raghuram Rajan: known globally for warning about financial risk taking before the 2008 crisis and for his stint as RBI Governor, but there is no 2019 Oxford Bodley Medal tied to his name.
  2. Amartya Sen: the only one of the four who holds a Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded in 1998 for work connecting welfare economics with real measures of famine and deprivation. It is this specific record of original scholarship that Oxford's Bodleian Libraries recognised with the Bodley Medal in 2019.
  3. Manmohan Singh: remembered chiefly as the Prime Minister who steered India's 1991 economic reforms as Finance Minister, a policymaking legacy rather than the kind of scholarly output the medal is built to reward.
  4. Shashi Tharoor: a widely read author and former Under-Secretary-General at the UN, but his 2019 recognition did not come from Oxford's Bodleian Libraries in this form.

Once the shared economics background is set aside as a coincidence rather than a clue, Sen's distinct Nobel winning research record is what actually earned him the medal.

Therefore, the correct answer is Amartya Sen.

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