How Lives Change

• Part I: Foundations


• 1: The Study of Villages and the Understanding of Development: Building the Evidence


• 2: Palanpur: The Village through Seven Decades


• 3: India and Palanpur: A Story of Change


• 4: Theory and India


• Part II: Economy


• 5: Changing Activities, Changing Markets: Agriculture


• 6: Tenancy in Palanpur


• 7: Changing Activities, Changing Markets: Beyond Agriculture


• 8: Poverty, Inequality, and Mobility in Palanpur


• Part III: Society


• 9: Human Development: Education, Health, Public Services


• 10: Women: Possibilities and Constraints


• 11: Society and Politics: Inertia and Change


• Part IV: Reflections


• 12: Future Prospects


• 13: Lessons for India, Policy, and the Economics of Development

Himanshu is Associate Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University,and Visiting Fellow, Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi, India. His areas of research include issues related to poverty, inequality, employment, food security, and agrarian change. He has been involved with various government committees including the Expert Group on Measurement of Poverty (Tendulkar Committee), National Statistical Commission, and the Ministry of Rural Development. He has received the Sanjay Thakur Young Economist Award of the Indian Society of Labour Economics and Personnalité d'Avenir of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Himanshu received his PhD in economics from JNU, New Delhi, India.

Peter Lanjouw is a Professor of Development Economics at VU University, Amsterdam. Prior to joining VU University he spent more than two decades in the Development Economics Research Group of the World Bank, most recently as Manager of the Poverty and Inequality team. He is current editor of the World Bank Research Observer and a past assistant editor of the World Bank Economic Review. He is a fellow of the Tinbergen Institute and the European Development Research Network, and was a core member of the Global Poverty Commission. His principal research interests include the measurement and analysis of poverty and inequality in developing countries, structural transformation in developing countries, structural transformation in developing countries and the contribution of longitudinal village studies to the analysis of rural development.

Nicholas Stern is the IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and Head of the India Observatory at the London School of Economics. He was previously President of the British Academy, and is President of the Royal Economic Society 2018/19. He was Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and

How Lives Change is a remarkable book which brings together two qualities seldom seen concurrently-empathy for the subject, in this case the inhabitants of Palanpur, usually found in anthropological writings, and the rigor of statistics and theory, associated with economics. This new book provides a keen, bird'seye view of research in rural India, with scholarship and a lightness of touch rare in economics. What makes this latest book especially valuable is the authors' use of Palanpur as a testing ground of what has happened all over India. The experience of Palanpur is used by the authors to offer useful tips to India-the importance of education, human capital and better vocational training, and the need for even greater connectivity to towns and cities. Kaushik Basu, Cornell University