CALCUTTA, 7 June 2005 — A close aide of Sonia Gandhi was mistaken for a Maoist guerrilla and mercilessly thrashed by the police in Balrampur near the Jharkhand-Chattisgarh border, a leading daily reported.
Ananda Bazar Patrika said in a front page report yesterday that Jean Dreze, a noted Belgian-born economist who is a member of United Progressive Alliance chief Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council, was on a tour of the backward region accompanied by 35-40 students of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University when he was roughed up.
On Saturday night, security personnel stopped a bus carrying Dreze and JNU students who had come for an on-the-spot-assessment of the federal-funded Rashtriya Rojgar Yojna, or national employment guarantee scheme, in the tribal Surguja-Gumla belt.
Apparently, the police first dragged a few students out and beat them up. When the bearded Dreze tried to intervene, he was kicked and punched until he revealed his identity and pleaded with the men in uniform to stop beating him.
Dreze and his boys cut short their traumatic tour after they were assaulted and flew back to Delhi.
The governments of Jharkhand and Chattisgarh have instituted a high-level probe into what is being described as an unfortunate incident by top officials of the two states.
Chattisharh Chief Minister Raman Singh yesterday ordered the Balrampur police chief to “collect all details about the incident and take stern action against those responsible for assaulting the economist”.
A spokesman for Jharkhand government said that the bus was stopped and searched because “Dreze’s team was shouting slogans similar to Maoist slogans”.
Dreze, who is regularly consulted by Gandhi on development issues, is also a close associate of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.
He is known for his contribution to development economics and public economics, with special reference to India.
Born in Belgium in 1959, Dreze has lived in India since 1979. He became an Indian citizen in 2002. He studied Mathematical Economics at the University of Essex and did his PhD Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi.
He has taught at the London School of Economics and the Delhi School of Economics, and is now Visiting Professor at the G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad, and JNU.
Dreze and Sen have jointly authored Hunger and Public Action (Oxford University Press, 1989) and India: Development and Participation (OUP, 2002).
He is also one of the authors of the Public Report on Basic Education in India (OUP, 1999).
Jean Dreze is also an active member of the Right to Food Campaign, the National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information, and the worldwide movement for peace and disarmament.
