Jean Dreze

You will be impressed if you look at India's GDP growth rate. But GDP and its growth rate are simplistic measures to understand how a country is faring. India's middle-class is large enough to keep the wheels of the economy chugging along.
Yet, unless everyone participates in economic and social growth, the engine will sputter and die.
In this book, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen have done an admirable job in analysing India's 'uncertain glory' as they call it.
Our under-investment in public show more hygiene, public health and education is appalling and alarming.

The authors have managed to walk the tightrope with admirable felicity. They point out the good and the bad. And they do so in a balanced manner, with the proper use of data.

What are their recommendations? I miss this. Barring this omission, the book is excellent. What is sad, is that the book remains relevant even now, years after it was published. show less

This is an interesting and detailed examination of India's failure to turn GDP growth into developmental progress for large segments of its population. India has dropped behind other developing nations on major indicators of development such as health and education.

Drèze and Sen focus largely on government efforts, which they criticize as insufficient and largely badly organized, though they highlight regional successes such as Tamil Nadu. They are critical of pushes to see the private show more sector as a solution to the needs of India's poorest and advocate vigorous efforts in the public sector. Despite this, anyone who wishes to characterize their approach as Marxist (for better or for worse) is overstating the case and probably hasn't read Sen very much. The focus is on government as a driver of progress for basic improvements in education, health, and welfare. They acknowledge that the private sector has a role to play. They are passionate about the role of government, but strongly critical of how it has operated in the past and present.

There is attention paid to social factors, particularly the role of women in anti-poverty work, as well as caste and regional variation within India.

The only weakness of the book is that it does not look at how the private sector--which the authors, based on previous writings and which they imply here, believe has a large role to play in India--does fit in in the larger scheme. While I agree that the private sector will not solve the problem of inadequate primary education, the question of how economic development will be harnessed for the benefit of larger numbers of Indians is not addressed. In addition (a minor point), I would have liked to see them address some of the other economic criticisms of direct food aid, such as potential market distortion, which they advocate with reservations rather than cash transfers.

The material may not be (probably is not) revolutionary to people who are well read in the field, but it was informative and readable for the non-expert. show less

Overall, this is a good book, neatly laid out in chapters to address separate issues about poverty. Jean Dreze wrote a good introduction to each section before inserting the various essays. If you want to learn about poverty in an Indian context, this book is a good place to start. You also understand the mirage behind Gujarat's much-vaunted performance and some problems in the Aadhar card rollout.
You also learn about the disconnect between policymakers and the problems on the ground.

The show more problem with the book is that it descends into a litany of complaints. What is the way forward? Not one essay proposed a solution. show less

The authors - Sen and Dreze - have done an exceptional work in detailing the actual state of India in this book. This book is an eye-opener where it talks about conditions of people living in India.

India is compared with a few other countries and it is appalling to know some sub-saharan countries fare better, on some metrics, than those in India. Education and primary healthcare are discussed at length. The studies show success of a few states in implementing norms that have definitely show more helped people living there.

The data collection for all these studies is exhaustive and the statistical analysis is very detailed. This makes the book very convincing for the common reader.

If you like this book, you should definitely have a look at Rebooting India. This book discusses solutions for many of the problems mentioned in Sen's book. show less