Jean Drèze’s research while affiliated with Ranchi University and other places

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Publications (98)


Weighty Evidence? Poverty Estimation with Missing Data
  • Article

April 2024

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40 Reads

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8 Citations

Studies in Microeconomics

Jean Drèze

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Anmol Somanchi

Attempts have been made to estimate poverty in India using a biased dataset, by adjusting household weights to remove or reduce the bias. The effectiveness of this method, however, is uncertain. Simulation exercises suggest that its ability to correct poverty estimates varies wildly depending on the nature of the underlying bias, which may be hard to guess—there lies the rub. When the bias changes over time, estimating poverty trends becomes truly problematic. There are wider lessons for poverty estimation with biased or missing data. JEL Codes: C83, I32


India Economic Development and Social Opportunity

October 2023

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138 Reads

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24 Citations

An analysis of endemic deprivation in India and of the role of public action in addressing that problem. The analysis is based on a broad view of economic development, focusing on human well-being and `social opportunity' rather than on the standard indicators of economic growth. India's success in reducing endemic deprivation since Independence has been quite limited. Recent diagnoses of this failure of policy have concentrated on the counterproductive role of government regulation, and on the need for economic incentives to accelerate the growth of the economy. This book argues that an assessment of India's failure to eliminate basic deprivations has to go beyond this limited focus, and to take note of the role played in that failure by inadequate public involvement in the provision of basic education, health care, social security, and related fields, Even the fostering of fast and participatory economic growth requires some basic social change, which is not addressed by liberalization and economic incentives. The authors also discuss the historical antecedents of these political and social neglects, including the distortion of policy priorities arising from inequalities of political power. Following on from this, the book considers the scope for public action to address these earlier biases and achieve a transformation of policy priorities. The introductory chapter presents the motivation, focus, and approach of the book. Chapter 2 discusses the respective roles of the market mechanism and government action in economic development and discusses the particular role of public involvement in the fields of health and education. In chapters 3 and 4, international comparisons of development experiences are brought to bear on the diagnosis of India's successes and failures. These two chapters also discuss the lessons to be learnt from the contrasting development experiences of different states within India, with particular attention to Kerala's outstanding success in social fields. Chapter 5 considers the role of public action and political organization in promoting social opportunities. Attention is drawn, in particular, to the part played by widespread illiteracy in suppressing that process and perpetuating social inequalities. The issue of basic education is further examined in chapter 6, which includes a critical assessment of public policy in this field. Chapter 7 discusses the specific problem on gender inequality, and the role of women's agency in the expansion of social opportunities for both women and men. The concluding chapter consolidates the argument and discusses the policy implication of the analyses presented. A statistical appendix presents a comparative picture of India and other developing countries, and also the comparative performance of different states within India.


The perils of embedded experiments

May 2023

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25 Reads

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6 Citations

Review of Development Economics

There is growing interest in experiments conducted by researchers and policymakers as a team. The attraction of these ‘embedded experiments’ is that they seem to facilitate speedy translation of research into policy. This approach, however, can trivialise public policy and compromise the independence of the researchers. It is also a fountain of ethical dilemmas including consent issues, conflicts of interest and compensation norms. The perils of embedded experiments, and possible safeguards, are discussed with the help of a case study.


The Covid-19 Crisis and People’s Right to Food

June 2021

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95 Reads

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16 Citations

India’s national lockdown in 2020, in response to the Covid-19 crisis, was one of the harshest in the world. Multiple household surveys indicate that the lockdown and the economic recession that followed led to a severe nutrition crisis. Food deprivation was most intense during the national lockdown but continued throughout the year. Relief measures helped, but they compensated for just a fraction of people’s income losses, even among poor households. It is doubtful that employment, income and nutrition among informal-sector workers and their families ever regained their pre-lockdown levels before a second wave of the Covid-19 epidemic hit the country in early 2021. The Indian government’s failure to put in place more effective relief measures is a serious denial of people’s right to food. With relief measures off the table in 2021, at the time of writing, there is a serious danger of another wave of intense food deprivation. [This paper was prepared for the Centre for Health Equity, Law and Policy (C-HELP).]


Maternity Entitlements in India: Women's Rights Derailed

April 2021

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87 Reads

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4 Citations

Maternity benefits of at least Rs. 6,000 per child are a legal right of all Indian women under the National Food Security Act, 2013. In practice, a large majority are still deprived of maternity benefits. A recent survey, conducted in six states of north India, brings out that pregnant women’s basic needs for nutritious food, proper rest and health care are rarely satisfied. Among women who had delivered a child during the 6 months preceding the survey, about half said that they had been eating less rather than more during pregnancy, and nearly 40 per cent complained of a lack of rest at that time. The figures are much worse in states like Uttar Pradesh, where, for instance, one third of the same women had not had a single ante-natal checkup. Average weight gain during pregnancy was just 7 kg over nine months in this sample, down to 4 kg in Uttar Pradesh. Aside from poor nutrition, lack of rest appears to be a major factor of low weight gain during pregnancy. There is an urgent need for better recognition of the special needs of pregnancy, provision of maternity benefits in accordance with the law, and better support for pregnant women including quality health care.


Jharkhand's Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups are Yet to Experience the 'Benefits' of Aadhaar NREGA SAHAYATA KENDRA MANIKA Survey team
  • Article
  • Full-text available

December 2019

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206 Reads

Abinash Das Choudhury

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Aninjit Pakhale

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Anmol Somanchi

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[...]

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Vivek Kumar

This report was prepared for a public hearing in Manika (Latehar District) on 13 December 2018. It is based on a survey of all PVTG households in Manika Block, carried out by the Sahayata Kendra team with student volunteers on 1-12 November 2018. The public hearing was a joint initiative of the Sahayata Kendra and Gram Swaraj Mazdoor Sangh, Manika.

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Casting the net: India's public distribution system after the food security act

February 2019

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80 Reads

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14 Citations

Economic and Political Weekly

A broad-brush assessment of the public distribution system is presented in six of India's poorest states- Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and West Bengal-soon after the National Food Security Act, 2013 came into force. Important gains have been made, including broader coverage, lower targeting errors, accelerated PDS reforms, and a greater political commitment to food security. In four of the six reference states, the PDS seems to be doing reasonably well, but Bihar and Jharkhand still have a long way to go. Even in the leading states, much remains to be done to achieve the purpose of the NFSA: Ending food insecurity.


Figure 1: PDS Transaction Rates in Ranchi District, January-July 2017 (%)
Table 5 : Purchase-Entitlement Ratio before and after the PoS System (%)
Aadhaar and food security in Jharkhand: Pain without gain?

December 2017

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2,712 Reads

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96 Citations

Economic and Political Weekly

Aadhaar-based biometric authentication is now compulsory for most users of the public distribution system in Jharkhand. Based on a recent household survey, this paper examines various issues related to this measure, including exclusion problems, transaction costs, and its impact on corruption. The findings raise serious questions about the appropriateness of this technology for rural Jharkhand.


Recent Social Security Initiatives in India

June 2017

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899 Reads

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140 Citations

World Development

There has been a major expansion of social security programs in India during the last 15 years or so, along with wider recognition of economic and social rights. This paper discusses five programs that can be seen as partial foundations of a possible social security system for India: school meals, child care services, employment guarantee, food subsidies, and social security pensions. The record of these programs varies a great deal between Indian states, but there is growing evidence that they make an important contribution to human well-being, and also that the achievements of the leading states are gradually spreading to other states as well. Much scope remains for extending these efforts: despite the recent expansion, India’s social security system is still very limited in international perspective. The paper also discusses some general issues of social policy in India, such as the arguments for universalization versus targeting and the value of a rights approach to social security.



Citations (59)


... This paper investigates whether reweighting can correct the bias of poverty projections produced by the SWIFT methodology. The performance of reweighting techniques differs by data and target indicators that were matched, and there is agreement in the literature that reweighting techniques reduce the biases in target statistics yet do not eliminate them (Lee (2006) and Dreze and Somanchi (2023)). Dreze and Somanchi (2023) created biased samples by dropping poorer households from a household survey and tested whether a non-PSW reweighting technique (maximum entropy reweighting, or maxentropy) can reduce biases in poverty rates and mean household expenditures. ...

Reference:

Correcting Sampling and Nonresponse Bias in Phone Survey Poverty Estimation Using Reweighting and Poverty Projection Models
Weighty Evidence? Poverty Estimation with Missing Data
  • Citing Article
  • April 2024

Studies in Microeconomics

... Today, solidarity is widely accepted and supported by economists, politicians, and, of course, social experts around the world (cf the influential works of e.g. Tawney, 1982, Sen, 1996Korpi and Palme, 1998;Drèze andSen, 1999, Handler andHasenfeld, 2006). It is hard to think of modern society as being prosperous and peaceful as it is today without the benevolent effects of solidarity across geographical, social, ethnic, age, and gender boundaries. ...

Public Action And Social Inequality
  • Citing Chapter
  • April 1996

... Kerala is in the south-western part of India with an approximate population of 33.4 million people (Census 2011); the state is an internationally recognised "Kerala model of development" which is for the progress of the state in the areas like poverty reduction, human development, economic and social growth (Dreze & Sen 1995Véron, 2001;Venugopalan & Bastian, 2021). Special assistance is provided for women entrepreneurs through financial aid, consultancy services, and loan facilities (Bose, 2013). ...

India Economic Development and Social Opportunity
  • Citing Book
  • October 2023

... Government provision of education spans various levels, including basic, secondary, higher, technical, vocational, and non-formal education (Dupriez & Dumay, 2006). Basic education, the foundational level, addresses essential needs outlined in global education goals (Dreze & Sen, 2003). This extends beyond formal structures, encompassing non-formal and informal activities to meet diverse learning needs (Aluede, 2006). ...

Basic Education As A Political Issue
  • Citing Chapter
  • April 1996

... There is support for it for material expenditures in two cases, one of which is insignificant, and the other for the 2012 (G) versus 2014 (C) comparison reveals a 45% reduction that is statistically significant as well. While this might seem an implausibly large magnitude at first, it begins to seem sensible when placed alongside the Cabinet note issued by the Government of India in 2015 which states that '… delays in payments kept increasing from 39% (payments made after 15 days from the date of closure of muster roll) in 2012-2013, to more than 70% in 2014-15 (till 20th March 2015', as cited in Drèze (2023). ...

The perils of embedded experiments
  • Citing Article
  • May 2023

Review of Development Economics

... LESSONS FROM A TIME OF UPHEAVAL 5 GDP during 2020-21. 1 While some countries scaled up the value of such assistance substantially, others extended benefits without necessarily scaling up their value (Gentilini, 2022). Despite the rapid and significant expansion, in general, these measures were inadequate (see Drèze and Somanchi (2021a) for a discussion of India). Overall, the South Asia region spent US $46 per capita (unadjusted for Purchasing Power Parity) relative to the US$314 per capita in the 194 countries for which these data were compiled (Almenfi & Iyengar, 2022). ...

The Covid-19 Crisis and People’s Right to Food
  • Citing Preprint
  • June 2021

... 43 In addition to improving the delivery system, it has been restrictive in scope, with the maternity benefits applying only for the first living child and discriminating against those with more than one child. The cumbersome application process, which requires a long list of documents to be submitted, often hinders timely payments (Drèze et al. 2021). Maternity benefits, to be successful, in their objective need to expand their focus to all women, that is, universalization of the program-and for every child. ...

Maternity Entitlements in India: Women's Rights Derailed
  • Citing Preprint
  • April 2021

... More direct connections between the social processes and unequal access to climate adaptation resources could be traced in later works on the political economy of climate change (Adger and Kelly, 1999;Blaikie et al., 1994), where intersectional analysis on institutions and economy were discussed. Central to such analysis are works by Dreze and Sen (1989) and Sen (1981) on human capabilities, livelihood and entitlements approach, that locates the causes of vulnerability to lack of entitlements, which mostly happen in the absence of robust and democratic state and institutional systems. These works have also been influential in climate vulnerability research from a social science perspective (Crabtree, 2018;Roy and Venema, 2002). ...

Hunger and Public Action

... Women's fallback position in case of a breakdown of family relationship considerably influences their bargaining power within the family and, as a result, the empowerment status (Drez & Sen, 1989;Sen, 1981&1990). Bloom, Wypij and Gupta (2001) argue that women with closer ties to natal kin were more likely to have greater autonomy in decisionmaking power, control over finances, and freedom of movement. ...

Hunger and Public Action.
  • Citing Article
  • January 1992

Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews

... The provision of free grains as a support measure to protect households from the COVID-19-related shock continues even in 2023, but cannot sufficiently alleviate the poor health outcomes. A decentralised approach has been recommended to improve the functioning of these existing programmes (Drèze et al., 2018;Gragnolati et al., 2006), which would also be key in implementing the suggested extensions. Exclusion or inclusion in any targeted programme is based on objective criteria, which cannot adequately capture the multitude of complex factors that cause poverty. ...

Casting the net: India's public distribution system after the food security act
  • Citing Article
  • February 2019

Economic and Political Weekly