Jean Drèze (born 1959) is a

Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German *Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...

-born

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

n welfare economist,

social scientist Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of socie ...

and

activist Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...

. He has worked on several developmental issues facing India like social welfare and gender inequality. His co-authors include Nobel laureate in

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

Amartya Sen Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, econom ...

, with whom he has written on

famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, Demographic trap, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an Financial crisis, economic catastrophe or government policies. Th ...

Nicholas Stern Nicholas Herbert Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford, (born 22 April 1946 in Hammersmith) is a British economist, banker, and academic. He is the IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Cli ...

, with whom he has written on policy reform when market prices are distorted, and Nobel laureate in economics

Angus Deaton Sir Angus Stewart Deaton (born 19 October 1945) is a British economist and academic. Deaton is currently a Senior Scholar and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at the Princeton School of Public ...

. He is currently an honorary professor at the

Delhi School of Economics Delhi School of Economics (DSE), popularly referred to as "D School", is a Higher Educational Institution within the University of Delhi. The Delhi School of Economics is situated in University of Delhi's North Campus in Maurice Nagar. Establ ...

, visiting professor at the Department of Economics, Ranchi University, and also the member of Economic Advisory Council to the

Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu The chief minister of Tamil Nadu is the chief executive of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In accordance with the Constitution of India, the governor is a state's ''de jure'' head, but ''de facto'' executive authority rests with th ...

headed by Nobel Laureate

Esther Duflo Esther Duflo, FBA (; born 25 October 1972) is a French–American economist who is a professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is the co-founder and co-director of the Abd ...

. He was a member of the

National Advisory Council The National Advisory Council (NAC) of India was a unconstitutional body set up by the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to advise the Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh. Sonia Gandhi served as its chairperson for much of th ...

of India in both first and second term, but only for a year each time.

Early life

Jean Drèze was born on 22 January 1959 in the ancient town of

Leuven Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the historic ...

as the son of

Jacques Drèze Jacques H. Drèze (5 August 1929 – 25 September 2022) was a Belgian economist noted for his contributions to economic theory, econometrics, and economic policy as well as for his leadership in the economics profession. Drèze was the first P ...

, (founder of the

Center for Operations Research and Econometrics The Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) is an interdisciplinary research institute of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) located in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Since 2010, it is part of the Louvain Institute of Data Analysis ...

at the

Université catholique de Louvain The Université catholique de Louvain (also known as the Catholic University of Louvain, the English translation of its French name, and the University of Louvain, its official English name) is Belgium's largest French-speaking university. It ...

). His brother, Xavier Drèze, is a marketing and consumer research scholar. He studied mathematical economics at the

University of Essex The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Es ...

in the 1980s and did his PhD (theoretical economics of cost-benefit analysis) at the

Indian Statistical Institute Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta ...

, New Delhi. He has lived in India since 1979 and became an Indian citizen in 2002.

Personal life

He was based in Delhi (1993 to 2002) and in Allahabad (2002 to 2014). He currently lives in Ranchi.

Career

Jean Drèze taught at the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...

in the 1980s, his only full-time post, and at the Delhi School of Economics, and had been Visiting Professor at the G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad. Presently, he is an Honorary Chair Professor of the "Planning and Development Unit" created by the Planning Commission, Government of India, in the Department of Economics, University of Allahabad, India. He has made wide-ranging contributions to development economics and public economics, with special reference to India. He has worked on many issues relating to development economics including hunger, famine, education, gender inequality, childcare, school feeding, employment guarantee etc. His works combine standard economic methods (such as his articles relating to poverty in India) and tools that are used more commonly by anthropologists (such as his work on the village of Palanpur, Moradabad District, Uttar Pradesh, India with

, Peter Lanjouw and others, which included him living for a period in village under the same conditions as local people, farming a plot of land and keeping animals as recounted with Naresh Sharma in the article "Sharecropping in a North Indian Village", Journal of Development Studies, Oct. 1996). The combination of extensive field work and qualitative analysis of everyday life and poverty, along with quantitative work makes his work distinctive in the field of economics. He uniquely brings to the table his extensive fieldwork with analytical skills.

PROBE Report

A key work widely cited that Dreze worked on as part of a small team was the primary education study of key states in northern India typically referred to by its short name, The PROBE Report, or The Public Report on Basic Education (1999). It remains a key reference due to the lack of similarly comprehensive studies using grassroots development specialists.

Social activism

Dreze is well known for his commitment to social justice, both in India and internationally. During and after his PhD in India, he adopted a lifestyle of voluntary simplicity. While in the LSE, he frequently slept rough and lived with homeless squatters, helping to start a squatters movement in 1988 that opened buildings to the homeless and defied eviction. He wrote a short book about this movement and the life of the homeless in London, called ''No. 1 Clapham Road: the diary of a squat''. Dreze is known for refusing luxury and, while doing fieldwork, still lives and works in the same conditions as his respondents. In Delhi he and his wife Bela Bhatia had a one-room house in a ''jhuggi''. Apart from academic work he has been actively involved in many social movements including the

peace movement A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals, such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peac ...

, the Right to Information campaign that led to the

Right to Information Act The Right to Information (RTI) is an act of the Parliament of India which sets out the rules and procedures regarding citizens' right to information. It replaced the former Freedom of Information Act, 2002. Under the provisions of RTI Act, a ...

in India, the Right to Food campaign in India,. among others. During the

1990–1991 Iraq War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...

, he joined a peace camp stationed on the Iraq-Saudi border. His 1992 article with Haris Gazdar, "Hunger and Poverty in Iraq, 1991", was one of the first assessments of

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

's economy after the

Gulf war The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...

, and an early warning about the potential human costs of the

Iraq sanctions The sanctions against Iraq were a comprehensive financial and trade embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Iraq. They began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, stayed largely in force until May 22, ...

. Another book that came out of Iraq is ''War and Peace in the Gulf'', edited by Bela Bhatia, Jean Dreze and

Kathy Kelly Kathy Kelly (born 1952) is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of ''Voices in the Wilderness'', and, until the campaign closed in 2020, a co-coordinator of ''Voices for Creative Nonviolence''. As part of p ...

Publications

Books * Drèze J. and Sen, A.K. 1989. ''Hunger and Public Action''. Oxford University Press. * (as Jean Delarue) 1990. ''No.1 Clapham Road: The diary of a squat''. Peaceprint. * Drèze J. and Sen, A. (eds.). 1991. ''The Political Economy of Hunger.'' Three volumes. Oxford University Press. * Ahmad E, Drèze J, Hills J, Sen A K (eds.) 1991. ''Social Security in Developing Countries''. Oxford: Clarendon Press. * Drèze J. and Sen, A. 1995. ''The political Economy of Hunger: selected essays''. Clarendon Press. (abridged) * Drèze J. and Sen, A.K. 1995. ''India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity''. Oxford University Press. * Dreze, Jean and Amartya Sen, (eds), 1997. ''Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives''. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. * Drèze J., M. Samson and S. Singh. 1997. ''The Dam and the Nation: Displacement and Resettlement in the Narmada Valley''. Delhi: Oxford University Press. . * A. De and J Drèze. 1999. ''Public Report on Basic Education in India''. The PROBE report. Oxford University Press. * Drèze J. (ed.) 1999. ''The Economics of Famine''. International Library of Critical Writings in Economics. London: Edward Elgar Publishing. * Bhatia B, J. Drèze & K. Kelly. 2001. ''War and Peace in the Gulf: Testimonies of the Gulf Peace Team''. London: Spokesman Books. ublished on the tenth anniversary of the Team's attempt to stop the Gulf War through non-violent occupation * Drèze J. and Sen, A.K. 2002. ''India: Development and Participation''. Oxford University Press. * Drèze J. and Sen, A.K. 2013 ''An Uncertain Glory, India and Its Contradictions.'' Penguin. * Drèze J., 2017 ''Sense And Solidarity – Jholawala Economics for Everyone.'' Permanent Black. Articles * Dreze, Jean and Haris Gazdar, 1997. "Uttar Pradesh: the Burden of Inertia", in Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, (eds) Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. * Drèze, J. 1990. Famine Prevention in India. In Drèze J. and Sen, A. (eds.) ''The Political Economy of Hunger''. vol 2. Oxford University Press. * Stern, N. and Drèze J. 1991. Policy Reform, Shadow Prices and Market Prices. ''Journal of Public Economics''. * Drèze J., 1991. Public Action for Social Security: Foundations and Strategy. In Ahmad E, Drèze J, Hills J, Sen A K (eds.). ''Social Security in Developing Countries''. Clarendon Press, Oxford. * Drèze J. and H. Gazdar. 1992. Hunger and Poverty in Iraq, 1991. ''World Development''. * Drèze J., M. Murthi and A-C. Guio. 1995. Mortality, Fertility and Gender Bias in India. ''Population and Development Review''. * Dreze, Jean and Naresh Sharma, 1996, "Sharecropping in a North Indian Village", ''Journal of Development Studies'', 33(1):1–40. * Drèze J. and P.V. Srinivasan. 1997. Widowhood and Poverty in Rural India. ''Journal of Development Economics''. * Drèze J. and Sen, A.K. (eds.) 1997. ''Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives''. Delhi: Oxford University Press. * Dreze, Jean and Naresh Sharma, "Palanpur: Population, Society Economy", chapter 1 in Peter Lanjouw and Nicholas Stern, eds., Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades, 1998. Oxford: Clarendon Press. * Dreze, Jean, Peter Lanjouw and Naresh Sharma. 1998. "Economic Development in Palanpur, 1957–93", chapter 2 in Peter Lanjouw and Nicholas Stern, eds., Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades. Oxford: Clarendon Press. * Dreze, Jean and Naresh Sharam, "Tenancy", chapter 8 in Peter Lanjouw and Nicholas Stern, eds., Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades, 1998. Oxford: Clarendon Press. * Dreze, Jean, Peter Lanjouw and Naresh Sharma, "Credit", chapter 9 in Peter Lanjouw and Nicholas Stern, eds., Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades, 1998. Oxford: Clarendon Press. * Baland, J-M. Drèze J. and L. Leruth. 1999. ''Daily Wages and Piece Rates in Agrarian Economies''. Journal of Development Economics. * Drèze J. and R. Khera. 2000. Crime, Gender and Society in India. ''Population and Development Review''. * Drèze J. and G.G. Kingdon. 2001. . ''Review of Development Economics'' 5(1),1–24. * Drèze J. 2001. Fertility, Education and Development: Evidence from India. ''Population and Development Review''. * Dreze, Jean "Patterns of Literacy and their Social Context", (originally written 199?), in Veena Das (ed.), 2004, Oxford Handbook of Indian Sociology, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. * Dreze, Jean, 2002, "On Research and Action", Economic and Political Weekly, 2, 37 March (9). New Delhi. * Deaton A. and Drèze J. 2002. Poverty and Inequality in India: A Reexamination. ''Economic and Political Weekly'', 7 September. 3729–3748. * Drèze J. 2003. Food Security and the Right to Food. In S. Mahendra Dev, K.P. Kannan and N. Ramachandran (eds). ''Toward a Food Secure India''. New Delhi: Institute for Human Development. * Drèze, Jean and Aparajita Goyal. 2003. Future of Mid-Day Meals. ''Economic and Political Weekly'', 1 November. * Drèze, Jean 2004. Democracy and the Right to Food. ''Economic and Political Weekly''. 1723–1731. * Deaton, Angus and Dreze, J. 2008. ''Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations * Drèze, Jean ''Democracy and Power: The Delhi Lectures'', Introduction by Jean Dreze
Democracy and Power, Introduction
* Drèze, Jean, and Khera, Reetika. 2017
Recent Social Security Initiatives in India
World Development.

References

External links

Jean Drèze
on TheHindu.com
Interview on India Together

Future of Mid-Day Meals.

Focus On Children Under Six, FOCUS Report
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dreze, Jean Living people 1959 births Belgian economists Indian economists Right to Information activists Indian Statistical Institute alumni People from Leuven People who lost Belgian citizenship Belgian emigrants to India Indian people of Belgian descent Naturalised citizens of India Members of National Advisory Council, India Alumni of the University of Essex People from Ranchi Scientists from Jharkhand 20th-century squatters 20th-century Indian economists 20th-century Belgian economists