Bina Agarwal is a Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the University of Manchester, UK. Prior to this, she was the Director and Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University. Agarwal has written extensively on land, livelihoods and property rights; environment and development; the political economy of gender; poverty and inequality; legal change; and agriculture and technological transformation. Her best known work is A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (1994)—which won the AK Coomaraswamy Book Prize, the Edgar Graham Book Prize and the KH Batheja Award.
In 2005, she spearheaded a successful campaign for the comprehensive amendment of Hindu Inheritance law in India to make it gender equal. Agarwal received a Padma Shri in 2008 for her contributions to education.
Samira Bose, an intern at The Caravan, spoke to Agarwal over email following the launch of “Gender Challenges,” a three-volume compendium of Agarwal's selected papers, written over three decades on 5 January 2016 in Delhi. They discussed her work, the intersection of gender and economics and her conversation with Amartya Sen at the launch.
COMMENT