Jean Drze - Sense and Solidarity: Jholawala Economics for Everyone

Jean Drze is one of the world's finest development economists. He works in a space that is widely but incorrectly ignored by most. The practical implications of evidence-based economics cannot be worked through without engaging all of society in democratic discussion, including (especially) those who are working for change. Economics itself fails without that engagement. In this collection of beautiful essays, some previously unpublished, Drze uses economics, philosophy, and his extensive practical experience to illuminate the whole range of social policy in India. Read on!

Angus Deaton, Nobel Laureate, Economic Sciences, 2015

Anyone with any interest in the fate of democracy and development in India should buy the book at once.

Ramachandra Guha, The Telegraph

It is this combination of passion and humour, of sincerity and argumentativeness, that makes Jean Drze's book such a compelling read. You may not always agree with the happy warrior, but you have to engage with him. Besides, he is good company!

Maitreesh Ghatak, NDTV

Economist Jean Drze's new book makes an increasingly necessary argument that creating a morally good, progressive society is as important as improving traditional development indexes.

Nilanjana Roy, BBC

I have learned a lot from reading the articles in this book as they came out over the years and really enjoyed reading the introduction on social development, democracy, research, and action as Jean was working on it. It has some very important words of wisdom and experience for aspiring jholawala economists.

Diane Coffey, Executive Director, Research Institute for Compassionate Economics

Beautifully produced, with a catchy and moving introduction this collection is a pleasure to read. Drze writes elegantly and passionately, shorn of rhetoric, arguing that we see India from the lens of the marginalized.

Ashiwini Desphande, Indian Express

This collection of Drze's essays, originally published in the opinion pages of news publications between 2000 and 2017, offers a remarkable view of these tumultuous years.

Supriya Sharma, Scroll

When an objective economic history of modern India is written, jholawalas will rub shoulders with post-independence socialism of Nehru and the Fund-Bank nudged reforms of 1990s. The right-based schemes, the debates regarding universal basic income and formulation of public policy through a democratic process owe a huge intellectual debt to the jholawalas, of which Jean Drze is a giant.

Sunil Bahri, Outlook

Dreze offers a sombre but insightful window into the failure and promise of social and economic policy in tackling tenacious problems of hunger, poverty, illiteracy, corruption and violence

Rakesh Kalshian, Down to Earth

a wonderful writer who reminds me of George Orwell But Drze is Orwell Plus, because he is also an economist and has been an important participant in some of the most interesting social change episodes in recent Indian history All in all a wonderful book and an indispensable man.

Duncan Green, Oxfam Blogs

Drze writes lucidly with a lot of passion on issues that really impact India.

Vivek Kaul

The book may be seen as a bridge between the more standard economics texts and the more lucid narratives of the struggles of marginalized people, such as Arundhati Roy's Broken Republic, which also deals with topics such as poverty, tribal rights, and government policy.

Tadit Kundu, Livemint

This book is admirable in many ways and deserves its popularity in India.

Keith Hart, Economic and Political Weekly

The scholarly contributions of Jean Drze over the last two decades have significantly shaped our understanding of the extent and nature of poverty and social vulnerability across India.

Prithviraj Guha, The Telegraph

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

Jean Drze 2017

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

First published by Permanent Black in 2017 This edition published in 2019

Impression: 1

Some rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, for commercial purposes, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization.

This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), a copy of which is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of this licence should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964547

ISBN 9780198833468

ebook ISBN 9780192569936

Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.