"I had met Jean Drze several times before. Once, in the early 1990s, when he was teaching at the London School of Economics, and living in a working-class tenement. A second time, in the late 1990s, when he was teaching in the Delhi School of Economics, and living in a jhuggi-jhopri colony in Timarpur. A third time, in the early 2000s, when he was visiting Bangalore, and I dropped him at the railway station where he took a train, travelling unreserved to places further south to study the implementation of the mid-day meal programme in small towns and villages across Tamil Nadu. On another occasion, I visited an NGO working among tribals in Odisha to find that Drze had just left my hosts, having chosen to spend a week walking from Kashipur to Rayagada, stopping in hamlets on the way when he was not sleeping under the open sky. And one time, when we were due to meet in Delhi, he had to abruptly cancel as he had to fly urgently to Brussels. Drze was in the process of getting Indian citizenship; that was hard enough, but even harder, apparently, was getting the Belgians to agree to his no longer being a Belgian."

Ramchandra Guha on the man who helped formulate NREGA, RTI and the Right to Food -- Jean Dreze. Do read