Content area
Full text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Bhagwati Jagdish and Panagariya Arvind , Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries (New York , PublicAffairs , 2013)
Drèze Jean and Sen Amartya , An Uncertain Glory: India and its contradictions (Princeton/London , Princeton University Press/Penguin , 2013)
Gupta Akhil , Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence and Poverty in India . (Durham , Duke University Press , 2012)
Book Reviews
In May 2014, a new political era dawned in India. National elections swept the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in the Lok Sabha, India's lower house of Parliament. On a turnout of 66%, the BJP itself won 31% of the votes and 52% of the seats; its coalition partners added a further 8% of the votes and 10% of the seats. Congress, hitherto in power with a coalition, received 19% of the votes and only 8% of the seats. Narendra Modi, the new Prime Minister, was persona non grata for many years in the US and much of Europe because, as Chief Minister in Gujarat in 2002, he let police stand by--and sometimes participate--as Hindu mobs killed Muslims and forced them out of their homes. Post his general election victory, however, focus has turned to his nationalistic, authoritarian and pro-business politics. Over the past 5 years, the Indian economic "miracle" has seemed to stumble: the BJP itself totally disrupted Parliamentary procedures, preventing any significant legislation. Not surprisingly, international business "sentiment" has judged the new government to be a "good thing", and markets (and the Indian Rupee) rose.
In this context the books under review here take on considerable contemporary significance. In very different ways they address the issue of what is happening to India's development trajectory, and the nature--and desirability--of whatever form of welfare state India has achieved or aspires to. Drèze and Sen's book continues a long series of publications in which they argue that human and social development is lagging significantly behind economic growth in India--and that more attention to public health and education, in particular, would enhance India's economic performance. Bhagwati and Panagariya continue their personal attacks on a straw man they have erected from Sen's larger opus, and are much more positive about...