Economist Jean Dreze revealed at the
Times Literary Festival
that his activism probably predates his academics. As a young student of second standard, he said he went off for a picnic with friends to protest the behavior of the teacher.
On Aadhaar, with quite a few members of the audience keen to understand his opposition, Dreze explained that he had a principled opposition to concentration of power. He explained that Aadhaar made it possible for the state to keep track of how much money people have in their bank accounts, where they were travelling and who they were speaking with– this made for enormous scope for surveillance. “Welfare schemes are being used to push Aadhaar,” he said, explaining that rather than ensuring efficient delivery of welfare programmes, Aadhaar was being made all-pervasive by insisting on its use for availing these schemes. Besides, while Aadhaar helped prevent identity fraud, it did little to prevent beneficiaries from being given less wheat than they were entitled to.
Dreze also pointed to the strides India has made since the early years of independence in average life expectancy, average literacy, and a whole host of other measures. He pointed out, though, that if one did a comparative analysis across different countries in the neighbourhood, one would find that Bangladesh, for instance, has achieved much higher standards on several social indicators at just half India’s per capita income.
He explained that even the wealthy have a stake in government hospitals – even the very wealthy find they have to pay much more for healthcare of dubious standards at large corporate hospitals, and many people have a personal experience of that, he said.
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