Jean Dreze Research Articles

Book Review: Jean Dreze, Sense and Solidarity: Jholawala Economics for Everyone

Book Review: Jean Dreze, <i>Sense and Solidarity: Jholawala Economics for Everyone</i>

Book Review: Jean Dreze (Ed.), Social Policy, Essays from Economic and Political Weekly

Jean Dreze (Ed.), Social Policy, Essays from Economic and Political Weekly, New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2016, 496 pp., ₹795, ISBN: 978-81-250-6284-4 (Paperback).

Which Way India?

Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries. New York: Public Affairs, 2014, pp. 280, US$28.99. Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, pp. 448, Paperback US$19.95, Hardcover US$29.95.

An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen

An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen

Book Review: Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, eds, Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for other Developing Countries and Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, eds, An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions

Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, eds, Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for other Developing Countries. New York, NY: Public Affairs. 2013. 302 pages. US$ 28.99. Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, eds, An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2013. 446 pages. US$ 22.95.

Book Review: Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions

Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions, London: Allen Lane, 2013, pp. XIII + 434, UK £ 20.

Combating Poverty Through an Attack on Calorie Deficits: A Mechanism Design Approach

This article tries to add some more value to the discussions on food security taken up by Jean Dreze and recently by Reetika Khera and other authors such as Indira Hirway and Madhura Swaminathan through a series of articles. It marshals information on availability and requirements for food grain with emphasis on the ‘Below Poverty Line’ (BPL) households and ‘Vulnerable but Above Poverty Line’ households. The latter are those below the World Bank’s $2 at PPP (purchasing power parity) per capita per day threshold but above the poverty line of $1.25 PPP per capita per day threshold when the reference year is 2005 (or in other words earning an income in India inadequate for buying a consumption bundle that $2 would have bought in the United States in 2005 but more than adequate for purchasing a reference consumption basket that $1.25 would have bought). The mentioned information is supplemented by that on diversion of food grain from the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) in India at the national as well as state level; errors in targeting the poor through the TPDS, as revealed by region specific studies; the design of various public distribution programmes at the state level; the national income distribution which has important implications for the potential magnitude of fiscal resources that can be generated for running a Public Distribution System (PDS) which offers greater food security for the poor and vulnerable; and finally the difference in the nature of urban and rural poverty with its implications for food subsidy policy. It reveals that the nation produces enough food grains to meet the food grain requirements of the country’s entire population and the problem is therefore essentially one of improper distribution and leakage rather than of inadequate production. It then goes on to point out that while the use of the TPDS to provide subsidized rations to certified BPL card holders and unsubsidized rations to others might be well intentioned and meant to target scarce fiscal resources and essential calories to the needy, such targeting has left much to be desired with a large number of BPL cards being appropriated by the APL population (and we have no way of knowing whether these families belong to the vulnerable category or non-vulnerable category) to compound the large physical diversions which can be largely be attributed to corrupt practices by transporters and dealers of TPDS outlets. However, there is hope as certain states have shown reasonable success in implementing the public distribution system – one primary example is Tamil Nadu which has universalized the system to overcome the problems of wrong identification of the poor, intentional or otherwise, and at the same time minimized diversions. The above information is collated and analysed to recommend a very simple solution: entitling every household to subsidized rations on the basis of its ration card but almost ensuring that the rich and the affluent, without any need for the mentioned subsidies and used to consuming fine varieties of grain, not avail of these for self consumption by providing only coarse and nutritious rice, wheat or millets through Fair Price Shops (in economic theory this principle is known as ‘mechanism design’, so christened because those “who need a particular scheme” and those “who do not” identify themselves, thus rendering identification by an under informed and error prone external source unnecessary). Of course, the possibility of the rich and affluent using their ration cards to avail of their entitlements of coarse grains for profitable resale still exists even if they themselves prefer to consume finer varieties of grain. Similarly, there is the very real possibility of TPDS outlet managers coercing the vulnerable to accept provisions that are below their maximum entitlements and then diverting the rest to the open market for sales to these very sections of the population. All these problems can be solved if the TPDS outlets deal in provision of only certain coarse varieties of food grain and the sale of these varieties is banned in the open market. Information regarding the banned varieties can be distributed to the civil society and the population at large through an information dissemination programme. Thus, it would be highly probable that any open market sale of a variety distributed through the TPDS would get reported and punished and therefore diversion would be minimised. Therefore, errors in targeting of subsidies would be avoided and the food requirements of the vulnerable population would be met at minimal fiscal cost to the government.

NREGA in Andhra Pradesh: Seven Lessons from the Data

In 2006, the government of India passed a law guaranteeing each and every rural household in the country one hundred days of work at a basic minimum wage. The law, known as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), in effect created India’s (and probably the world’s) largest anti-poverty program in terms of number of beneficiaries. According to official statistics, 45 million households participated in NREGA in fiscal year 2008-09. An innovative feature of the NREG Act is its provisions for transparency: the act itself stipulates that work records, or “muster rolls”, be made available to the public, and that local “social audits” be conducted on a regular basis (Right to Food, 2007). The state of Andhra Pradesh has taken this call for transparency once step further by making detailed micro-level data on NREGA participation in the state available to the public over the internet. To the author’s knowledge, there are few precedents among major poverty relief programs for this kind of public data dissemination. In this focus note, we highlight some specific lessons that may be learned by looking closely at this data. The lessons presented here are not intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the functioning of NREGA in Andhra Pradesh. For such an overview, readers are recommended to consult Anil Sharma’s excellent review of the program or the articles in the mainstream press by Jean Dreze and his coauthors. Rather, the lessons presented here are meant to complement such overviews by presenting key insights derived from quantitative analysis of the data.

A Discursive Dominance Theory of Economic Reform Sustainability: The Case of India

This article hypothesizes that economic reforms become sustainable when the discursive conditions prevailing in society tip against the existing paradigm under exceptional circumstances. Thus, unless the pro-liberalization constituencies dominate the development discourse, economic reforms, initiated under the exigencies of crisis and conditionalities, or carried out by a convinced executive with or without the stimulus of a crisis, will be reversed. The discursive conditions are determined based on eight factors: the dominant view of international intellectuals, illustrative country cases, executive orientations, political will, the degree and the perceived causes of economic crisis, attitudes on the part of donor agencies, and the perceived outcomes of economic reforms. The paper seeks to prove this “discursive dominance” hypothesis for the Indian case through a cross-temporal, comparative review of the evolution of economic policy in India over six different phases.

Democracy in India. Edited By Niraja Gopal Jayal. Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 571 pp. $45.00 (cloth).

LIST OF TABLES LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS INTRODUCTION (NIRAJA GOPAL JAYAL): I INDIAN DEMOCRACY PREFIGURED 1. Democracy under the Raj: Elections and Separate Representation in British India (James Chiriyankandath) 2. The Rhetoric of Democracy and Development in Late Colonial India (David Washbrook) II DEMOCRACY AND THE STATE 3. The Crisis of the Moderate State and the Decline of Democracy (Rajni Kothari) 4. Political Change in a Democratic Developing Country (Atul Kohli) 5. Demand Polity and command Polity (Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph) 6. The State and Democracy in India or What happened to Welfare, Secularism, and Development (Niraja Gopal Jayal III DEMOCRACY AND CIVIL SOCIETY 7. The Culture of representative Democracy (Sudipta Kaviraj) 8. Power and Knowledge in Development Discourse: New Social Movements and the State in India (Pramod Parajuli) 9. The Democratic Rite: Celebration and Participation in the Indian Elections (Walter Hauser and Wendy Singer) 10. Hunger and Public Action (Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen) 11. The Puzzle of Indian Democracy: A Consociational Interpretation (Arend Lijphart) IV DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT 12. Economic Development and Political Democracy: Interaction and Economies and Politics in Independent India (Deepak Nayyar) 13. The Political Economy of Reform in India (Pranab Bardhan) V DEMOCRACY, LOCALITY, AND REGION 14. Ballot Box and Local Power: Elections in an Indian Village (Subrata K. Mitra) 15. Democracy and Decentralization in Karnataka (India) (Richard C. Crook and James Manor) VI THE FUTURE OF INDIAN DEMOCRACY 16. The Anti-caste Movement and the Discourse of Power (Gail Omvedt) 17. Hindu Nationalism and Democracy (Christophe Jaffrelot) ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: NAME INDEX SUBJECT INDEX.

Poverty, Growth, and Safety Nets: A Comparative Regional Perspective

Among the most remarkable events in the world during the last half-century has been the notable economic growth, social transformation, and poverty reduction that has taken place in Asia. It was only three decades ago that more than half of the region's population lived below the poverty line, only two of five adults were literate, and the average person could expect to live only 48 years. At present, the proportion of people who are poor is down to one-third, 70 percent of adults are literate, and life expectancy is up to 68 years. And while the region's population has increased from 1.8 billion to 3.0 billion, the number of poor people has dropped from more than 1 billion to about 800 million. And yet, because Asia is so vast and heterogeneous, its success story does not apply equally to all the countries. There are large differentials in economic and social progress between and within countries in the region. There is a sharp contrast between the countries of South Asia and those in East and Southeast Asia. Even the more dynamic East and Southeast Asian countries have suffered recent setbacks (including sharp increases in poverty) in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis of 1997 to 1998. This volume is devoted to the topic of poverty, growth, and safety nets in Asia. The issue contains nine papers, authored by economists, sociologists and anthropologists, covering five countries in the region: India, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. These countries differ enormously from each other in terms of their records on poverty reduction, economic growth, and safety net interventions. For instance, while the incidence of poverty in Pakistan increased from 22.4 percent in 1993 to 31 percent in 1997, in Vietnam it declined from 58 percent to 37 percent over roughly the same period (1992-93 to 1997-98). The growth performance of the two countries was also very different, with the Vietnamese economy growing at about twice the rate of the Pakistani economy (real growth of about 9 percent per annum over the period 1993 to 1997 versus 4.6 percent). While the papers in this issue do not directly address the reasons for this divergent experience, they deal with the rich diversity of issues relating to poverty and growth in the region−from the role of democracy in influencing social inequality in India to the access of health services by the poor in Vietnam. The paper by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen addresses the question of democracy and its role in securing economic development and social justice in the context of India. The authors argue for making a distinction between democratic institutions and democratic practice. While India has been unusually successful (among developing countries) in maintaining and nurturing democratic institu-

The Dam and the Nation: Displacement and Resettlement in the Narmada Valley. Edited by Jean Dreze, Meera Samson, and Satyajit Singh. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. ix, 339 pp. $32.00 (cloth).

The Dam and the Nation: Displacement and Resettlement in the Narmada Valley. Edited by Jean Dreze, Meera Samson, and Satyajit Singh. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. ix, 339 pp. $32.00 (cloth). - Volume 58 Issue 1

Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives. Edited by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. xx, 420 pp. $78.00.

Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives. Edited by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. xx, 420 pp. $78.00.

THE PERFORMANCE OF THE INTEGRATED RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM IN INDIA: AN ASSESSMENT

The Developing EconomiesVolume 36, Issue 2 p. 117-131 THE PERFORMANCE OF THE INTEGRATED RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM IN INDIA: AN ASSESSMENT Satya PAUL, Satya PAULSearch for more papers by this author Satya PAUL, Satya PAULSearch for more papers by this author First published: 06 March 2007 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-1049.1998.tb00213.xCitations: 3 I am grateful to M.L. Dantwala, Ajit K. Dasgupta, Jean Dreze, Raja Junankar, Ashok Parikh, and S. Subramaniam, as well as the referees and the Editorial Board for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper. The usual disclaimers apply. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume36, Issue2June 1998Pages 117-131 RelatedInformation

Book Review

Book reviewed in this article:How Developing Countries Trade: The Institutional Constraints by SHEILA PAGEExpanding Membership of the European Union by RICHARD BALDWIN, PERTTI HAAPARANTA and JAAKKO KIANDERThe Political Economy of Hunger, Selected Essays by JEAN DREZE, AMARTYA SEN and ATHAR HUSSAIN (eds.)Inflation Targets by LEONARDO LEIDERMAN and LARS E. O. SVENSSON (eds.)

Choice, Welfare, and Development: A Festschrift in Honour of Amartya K. Sen.

Professor Amartya Sen has been a distinguished and influential scholar in development economics for over twenty years, and this edited volume seeks to reflect his interests, and the inspiration he has provided for others. The editors have succeeded in creating a coherent and stimulating set of papers from well-known contributors. The volume deals with the enduring themes of Amartya Sen's work, ranging through theoretical issues of development economics to the philosophical foundation of welfare systems, and ethics in society. Contributors: Kenneth Arrow, A. B. Atkinson, Pranab Bardhan, J. L. Coles, Rajat Deb, Jean Dreze, Louis Gevers, Peter Hammond, Ravi Kanbur, Eric Maskin, Robert Nozick, Siddiq Osmani, Martin Ravallion, Kevin Roberts, Robert Solow, S. Wibaut

Book reviews

MORAL LEADERSHIP From Power to Partnership: Britain in the Commonwealth, The Church of England in the Anglican Communion, Report of the International and Development Affairs Committee of the Board for Social Responsibility, Church House Publishing, London, 1991, pages 120, £6.95. CONSTITUTIONAL MORASS Liberty and Community. Canadian Federation and the Failure of the Constitution, R. C. Vipond, State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, 1991, pages x + 249. DIVINE PROVIDENCE British Christians, Indian Nationalists and the Raj, Gerald Studdert‐kennedy, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1991, £10.95, pages 274. CARIBBEAN LEFT POLITICS Jamaican Politics: A Marxist Perspective in Transition, Trevor Munroe, Heinemann Publishers (Caribbean) and Lynne Riener, Kingston and Boulder, CO, 1990, pages 322. EXPLORING AND MAPPING INNER ASIA The Pundits. British Exploration of Tibet and Central Asia, Derek Waller, University Press of Kentucky, USA, $30/£18.50, Distributed in UK by John Randall, 47 Moreton St, London SW1V 2NY. The Political Economy of Hunger, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen (eds), Volume 1, Entitlement and Weil‐Being, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990, pages 492, £40.

Hunger and public action. Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen Clarendon, Oxford, 1989,373 pp.

Hunger and public action. Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen Clarendon, Oxford, 1989,373 pp.

ON “HUNGER AND PUBLIC ACTION”: A Review Article on the Book by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen

Recent writings on poverty and hunger agree broadly on objectives and means but diverge significantly in emphasis. Views differ on the importance and function of economic growth and on how much weight to give to direct public support. These differences can matter in policy choices. Hunger and public action, by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, is an important contribution to the literature on antibunger policy. This article critically examines the issues raised by the book, its differences with other recent writings, and the implications for both policy and future research on policy.