Book Launch: Research for Action: A Conversation with Jean Drèze

jean dreze book launch

Convener: Matthew Brack

Speakers: Professor Jean Dreze (Delhi School of Economics), Professor Matthew McCartney (CSASP), Professor Sabina Alkire, Dr Duncan Green (Oxfam), Ms Soumya Mishra, Mr Amogh Sharma

Jean Drèze has a rare and distinctive understanding of the Indian economy and its relationship with the social life of ordinary people. He has travelled widely in rural India and done fieldwork of a kind that few economists have attempted. This has enabled him to make invaluable contributions not only to public debates on economic and social policy but also to our knowledge of the actual state of the country.

Drèze’s insights on India’s “unfashionable” issues – hunger, poverty, inequality, corruption, and conflict – are all on display here and offer a unique perspective on the evolution of social policy over roughly the past two decades. Historic legislations and initiatives of the period, relating for instance to the right to food and the right to work, are all scrutinised and explained, as are the fierce debates that often accompanied them.

“Jholawala” has become a disparaging term for activists in the business media. This book affirms the learning value of collective action combined with sound economic analysis. In his detailed Introduction, Drèze persuasively argues for an approach to development economics where research and action become inseparably interconnected.

This is a book as much for economists as for every reading citizen.

For further information on the book please click here.

Further Information

All welcome. Prior booking not required.

Related Documents

Dreze_poster_vs2.pdf