A book talk by economist, Pranab Bardhan on his new memoirs, Charaiveti: An Academic’s Global Journey (Harper Collins India, 2023), a fascinating account of his richly varied and widely-travelled life, interwoven with thoughtful comments on politics and society both in India and abroad and on some major strands of international intellectual debates.
Prof. Gérard Roland (Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science), Prof. Aprajit Mahajan (Associate Professor of Agriculture and Resource Economics) and Prof. Manisha Shah (Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy) will serve as discussants at the event.
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About the Book
The word ‘charaiveti’, from an ancient Sanskrit hymn, means ‘keep moving’, in search of self-realization. The leading Indian economist and public intellectual Pranab Bardhan invokes this in his moving narrative of a personal and professional journey.
From his beginnings in a poor neighbourhood in Kolkata and the idyllic days in Santiniketan, from being home-schooled by his father followed by a vigorous student life at Presidency College, Kolkata and in Cambridge, England, Bardhan rose to being among the foremost development economists in the world. After serving on the faculty of MIT, Indian Statistical Institute and Delhi School of Economics, he finally settled at the University of California, Berkeley. In the process he interacted closely with the likes of James Meade, Joan Robinson, Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow, James Mirrlees, Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof, Jerry Cohen, Jon Elster, Amartya Sen, T.N. Srinivasan, K.N. Raj, Ashok Rudra, Mrinal Datta Chaudhuri, Sukhamoy Chakravarty, Ashis Nandy and Romila Thapar.
In his memoir he provides a fascinating account of his richly varied and widely-travelled life, interwoven with thoughtful comments on politics and society both in India and abroad and on some major strands of international intellectual debates. These accounts are enlivened by a profusion of stories, anecdotes and amusing incidents, and draw copiously from his interests in literature and films.
Witty, wise and perceptive, Charaiveti is more than just a memoir-it is a sharp-eyed look at where we have been and where we may be headed, as seen through the lens of a remarkable life.
Praise for the Book
“Pranab Bardhan is one of the pioneers of modern development economics. He has also had a ringside view of sixty tumultuous years and more, both for India and the field of economics. This is the story of those years, told in a voice gentle and yet incisive—like the author, always amusing and yet deeply humane.”
- ABHIJIT V. BANERJEE, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Pranab Bardhan is a man of exceptionally wide scholarship, of a fiercely independent turn of mind and one who has always been deeply immersed in literature and cinema. His observations of his times, in different parts of the world, and of the many people whom he has known, are always entertaining, his insights often profound. This memoir is a joy to read.”
- JOHN HARRISS, Professor Emeritus, International Studies, Simon Fraser University
“Economist Pranab Bardhan recounts, in engaging prose, his remarkable journey from childhood in a rough Kolkata neighbourhood to the high tables of the intellectual world in the West. The persistence of inequality in the world has remained for him an abiding concern.”
- INDIRA RAJARAMAN, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research
“Charaiveti is written with Pranab Bardhan’s customary charm and wit. In documenting his journey, he weaves together reflections on the world with recognizable themes from his academic writings and offers us insights into why he has been such an important figure in humanizing and broadening the discipline of economics.”
- TIM BESLEY, Professor of Economics and Political Science, London School of Economics
“Pranab Bardhan proves that he is not only an exceptional scholar but also an expert raconteur. He has written a fascinating memoir that is highly entertaining and full of insights about academia, economics, India—and indeed, the world at large.”
- DANI RODRIK, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard University
“In his “travels”—for that is how he describes his memoir— through fast-changing times, continents, cultures, economies and the portals of academe, or in his interactions with almost all the major economists of the time, Pranab Bardhan remains passionately engaged with the political–economic problems of India and other such “extremely unequal” developing countries: relentlessly seeking ways of redressal, and lovingly reliving and objectively unfolding his Kolkata of the 1950s.”
- SAMIK BANDYOPADHYAY, Editor, Translator and Film, Theatre and Art Critic
Author Bio
Pranab Bardhan is Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Educated at Presidency College, Kolkata, and Cambridge University, England, he had been part of the faculty of MIT, Indian Statistical Institute and Delhi School of Economics before joining University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of seventeen books, including Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India (Princeton University Press, 2011) and A World of Insecurity: Democratic Disenchantment in Rich and Poor Countries (Harvard University Press, 2022). A collection of his Bengali essays has been published by Ananda Publishers in Kolkata in 2020.
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PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.
Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.
