ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Ten essays in this collection are co-authored with people who are not only valued colleagues but also dear friends: Bela 

Bhatia, Angus Deaton, Reetika Khera, Siddhartha, Vivek S., and the PROBE Team (Anuradha De, Pushpendra, Claire Noronha, Anita Rampal, Meera Samson, Amarjeet Sinha, and A.K. Shiva Kumar). Their good advice and influence, in fact, extend well beyond the co-authored articles. Many essays, as well as the Introduction, have also benefited from comments or suggestions from Sabina Alkire, Diane Coffey, Nikhil Dey, Haris Gazdar, Ramachandra Guha, Aashish Gupta, Mustafa Haji, Aparna John, Sneha Menon, Sudha Narayanan, 

Christian Oldiges, Isabel Pimenta, Vandana Prasad, Kumar Rana, C. Rammanohar Reddy, Amartya Sen, and Dean Spears, among others. Last but not least, I received very helpful editorial advice from Naman Garg, Nazar Khalid, and Jessica Pudussery. 

Most of the essays in this book were initially published in The Hindu, one of India’s leading dailies. I am grateful to those of its edit ors and staff members that I worked with over the years, including Shalini Arun, P. Jacob, Mini Kapoor, Murali N. Krishnaswamy, Nirmala Lakshman, Suresh Nambath, N. Ram, Srinivasan Ramani, N. Ravi, Radhika Santhanam, Sid dharth Varadarajan, and R. Vijaya Shankar.

This book would not have seen the light of day without the valuable advice and overwhelming generosity of Rukun Advani and Anuradha Roy. Aside from working on the design of this book as if it were their own, they helped me to clarify my thoughts on many issues. The days I spent with them in their lovely cottage in Ranikhet 

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(Uttarakhand), where Permanent Black’s editorial work happens, are among the happiest in recent memory.

The warmest acknowledgement is collective. It goes to all the scholars, students, volunteers, respondents, friends and others who enriched the journeys that led to this book, from academic conferences and field surveys to public meetings and street demonstrations. As discussed in the Introduction, research for action is by nature a collective effort.

Finally, the Department of Economics at Ranchi University (Jharkhand) provided a congenial environment for the preparation of this book. Jharkhand may seem like an odd destination for a develop ment economist, but for me it turned out to be a better vantage point than the national or international capitals of development research. Among many other gaps in this book, I would have liked to write about what I have learnt from the Adivasi (tribal) world in Jharkhand. Tribal communities tend to be seen as relics of the past, and no doubt their lifestyle will evolve, but I see some of their norms and values (equality, co-operation, freedom, honesty, gusto) as the wave of the future. The last essay in this book, “Development and Public-Spiritedness”, is partly inspired by their example.