How India’s social welfare regime has evolved and what challenges lie ahead

India is in transition but not all Indians are able to prosper. The country’s growth story has been characterised by widening inequality and a failure of the state to lift its citizens out of poverty and other forms of economic deprivation such as undernutrition among children. While some forms of anti-poverty welfare programmes have existed throughout independent India’s history, they had limited impact.

The importance of redistribution for inclusive growth has risen to the top of the social policy agenda only in the last two decades. The “rights-based” legislative reforms – right to food, work and education – in the early 2000s, in consonance with various independent initiatives by the state governments, made social welfare programmes central to public policy discourse in the country. Expansion of social pensions, maternity benefits, housing and cooking gas subsidies, along with unconditional cash assistance to farmers, have further added to the array of social welfare benefits, along with their significance for electoral outcomes.

In a recent book I co-authored with Prabhu Pingali, The Future of India’s Social Safety Nets: Focus, Form, and Scope, we evaluate India’s performance on providing social support through the various social safety nets as they were introduced, repealed, and re-introduced over the course of its last 75 years of independent history....

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