After regaining independence in 1947, India immediately adopted a firmly democratic political system. The famines of the British era disappeared, along with economic stagnation; despite a recent dip, India's growth remains among the fastest in the world. Yet, Dr ze and Sen argue, there have been failures both to foster participatory growth and to make good use of the public resources generated by economic growth to enhance people's living conditions. This book presents a powerful analysis not only of India's deprivations and inequalities, but also of the restraints on addressing them - and of the possibility of change through democratic practice.

Author Biography

Jean Dreze (Author) JEAN DREZE, currently visiting professor at Ranchi University (ex-LSE), has lived in India since 1979. He has made wide-ranging contributions to development economics and public policy, with special reference to India. He is the author of Sense and Solidarity: Jholawala Economics for Everyone, the co-author of the Public Report on Basic Education in India and, with Amartya Sen, of Hunger and Public Action and An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions. Amartya Sen (Author) Amartya Sen is Professor of Economics and Professor of Philosophy at Harvard. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1998 to 2004, and won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998. His many celebrated books including Development as Freedom (1999), The Argumentative Indian (2005), Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (2007), and The Idea of Justice (2010), have been translated into more than 30 languages. In 2012 he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama and in 2020 he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade by President Steinmeier.