Globalized Growth in Largely Agrarian Settings: The Case of India

CASI Seminar
Anirudh Krishna
Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
Center for the Advanced Study of India
3600 Market Street, Suite 560 (5th floor)
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Anirudh Krishna is Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University. His research investigates how poor communities and individuals in developing countries cope with the structural and personal constraints that result in poverty and powerlessness. Recent research projects have examined poverty dynamics at the household level for 35,000 households in India, Kenya, Uganda, Peru, and the U.S. examining both how people escaped poverty, and more importantly, how some came to be poor in the first place. Current research concerns include social mobility, spatial inequality, democratic governance, and urban slums. Dr. Krishna’s recent publications include One Illness Away: Why People Become Poor and How they Escape Poverty (Oxford University Press, 2010) and Poverty, Participation and Democracy: A Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2008). He has written five other books and published more than fifty journal articles and book chapters. Dr. Krishna received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University, Sweden in 2011; the Olaf Palme Visiting Professorship from the Swedish Research Council in 2007; the Dudley Seers Memorial Prize in 2005; and the Best Article Award of the American Political Science Association, Comparative Democratization Section in 2002. Before returning to academia, he spent 14 years with the Indian Administrative Service, managing diverse rural and urban development initiatives.

About the Lecture:
Globalized growth is widening spatial disparities in developing countries. A concentric pattern of development ranged around bigger cities, with radially dissipating benefits, has emerged. Assets and income, health status, education achievement, information, and governance quality are all at higher levels in cities, falling off and becoming progressively lower deeper into the countryside. Remote rural villages, home to more than half India’s population, have regressed, not just in relative, but also in absolute terms. The more rural you are the worse are your prospects for significant upward mobility. Coping with widening urban-rural gaps is a critical and unprecedented challenge for public policy, becoming harder on account of elite perceptions and attitudes.

Event Flyer

The Nand & Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture Series is an endowed public program of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI). Launched in the 2007-08 academic year, and made possible through the generous support of the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, the series brings renowned India specialists to the Penn community and serves as a critical forum for analyzing and understanding the complex economic, political, social, and cultural changes that the world’s largest democracy is experiencing, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
The Saluja Global Fellows Program has been made possible by the generous gift from Vishal Saluja ENG’89 W’89. CASI was excited to launch the program during the 2022–23 academic year, coinciding with the Center’s 30th Anniversary. This new program enables CASI to invite eminent leaders and rising experts on contemporary India preferably from the fields of media, culture, law, and contemporary history to be in residence for one to two weeks at CASI.