Economic Graffiti: The view from Palanpur | The Indian Express

Economic Graffiti: The view from Palanpur | The Indian Express

Written by Kaushik Basu |Updated: June 14, 2019 9:15:36 am

The writer is C. Marks Professor at Cornell University and former Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, World Bank.

Economic Graffiti: The view from Palanpur

The experience of Palanpur offers useful tips to India — importance of education, human capital, vocational training, need for greater connectivity

This new book provides a keen, bird’s eye view of research in rural India, with scholarship and a lightness of touch, rare in economics.

Palanpur, with a population of barely 1,255 individuals, clustered in 233 households (2008 data), is a nondescript village in the Bilari Block of Moradabad district, Uttar Pradesh, some 220 kilometers east from Delhi. The residents belong to various caste groups — Thakurs, Muraos, Jatavs — and are pre-dominantly Hindus, though about 10 per cent of the population is Muslim, themselves broken up between two castes — the Telis and Dhobis.