Diederick J. Vandewalle, Associate Professor of Government
Topic
For my Foreign Study Program in Hyderabad, India, I read Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen's An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions. Amartya Sen is arguably one of the most sophisticated writers—part economist, part philosopher—on India's contemporary development issues, and his analysis of the country's problems stands in stark contrast to much of the market-oriented strategy India's current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is advocating. Deeply concerned about the rapidly growing inequalities in India and about what Sen sees as the apathy of India's better-off elites, An Uncertain Glory is a passionate defense of thinking about development in broad humanistic terms, deeply skeptical of the notion that only economic growth matters.