The Politics Of Poverty Reduction In India

This book brings together three posthumous of Dr. Chelliah on reforms and poverty alleviation. Together they unravel the working of the Indian political economy and explain the causes behind persistent poverty in the country despite economic growth. The essays address the issues of effective means of poverty reduction by the states, reforms of federal fiscal relations, and taxes. Dr. Chelliah's central premise is that the major fault of India's economic policy has been that it was largely based on democratic socialist thought, thereby entrusting the government with the greatest responsibility, but without delineating in sufficient detail of how the government should respond to the challenge.

Social movements have played a vital role in Indian politics since well before the inception of India as a new nation in 1947. During the Nehruvian era, poverty alleviation was a foundational standard against which policy proposals and political claims were measured; at this time, movement activism was directly accountable to this state discourse. In the first volume to focus on poverty and class in its analysis of social movements, a group of leading India scholars shows how social movements have had to change because poverty reduction no longer serves its earlier role as a political template. With distinctive chapters on gender, lower castes, environment, the Hindu Right, Kerala, labor, farmers, and biotechnology, Social Movements in India will be attractive to students and researchers in many different disciplines.

The Previous Century Was Marked By India S Great Transformation From A Colonial Agrarian Economy To A Modern, Vibrating, Knowledge-Based Economy Within The Framework Of A Liberal And Secular Democracy. A High Annual Gdp Growth Rate Of Over 8 Per Cent Is Now Being Achieved On A Consistent Basis. The Rapid Economic Growth Has, However, Brought Only A Marginal Decline In Rural And Urban Poverty As Nearly 250 Million People, Constituting About 25 Per Cent Of The Country S Total Population, Still Remain Below The Poverty Line.The Data Relating To The Dimensions Of Poverty Is Startling A Whopping 350 Million People Are Illiterate, 150 Million Have No Access To Safe Drinking Water, 750 Million Lack Clean Sanitation Facilities And Are Prone To Diseases Resulting Therefrom, And 50 Per Cent Of The Children Eat Below Acceptable Nutritional Levels. Average Life Expectancy At Birth Has No Doubt Risen To 63 Years, But Infant Mortality Rate (Imr) And Maternal Mortality Rate (Mmr) Are Still At Unacceptably High Levels 57 Per 1000, And 3 Per 1000 Live Births Respectively. In Terms Of Human Development Index (Hdi), India Is Ranked 126Th Among The 177 Listed Countries. Even The Mentioned Statistics Do Not Fully Capture The Sheer Destitution And Misery Our Marginalized Sections Of Population Are Subjected To. The Poverty That They Endure Robs Them Of Their Human Dignity And Makes A Mockery Of Our Claims To Social Justice And Equity.Growth, When Unevenly Spread, Dwarfs Overall Prosperity. Hence, Bridging The Income Divide Is The Biggest Challenge For India. The Government On Its Part Has Launched Several Poverty Alleviation Programmes But They Have Not Brought The Desired Result. The Approach Paper To The Eleventh Five-Year Plan Has Laid Emphasis On Strategies That Accelerate Growth And Make It Broadbased.The Present Anthology Is Comprised Of Well-Researched Articles By Erudite Scholars Who Have Deeply Analysed The Problem Of Persisting Poverty In India. Various Factors Responsible For Such A Situation Have Been Studied And Ways And Means Suggested To Considerably Reduce If Not Eradicate Poverty.The Book Will Serve As A Valuable Reference Source For Students And Teachers Of Economics And Researchers On This Subject. It Will Also Be Useful For The Policymakers, Planners, Parliamentarians, Government Agencies And Ngos. Common Readers Concerned With The Overall Development Of The Nation Will Find It Highly Informative.

This thoughtful and challenging book affords an alternative vision of India's rise in the world.

'To take birth as a poor man itself is a big punishment. We are facing many difficulties and there is none to support us. We cannot die also. ... Our condition is like applying perfumed oil to mustache when there is no food to eat.' - Male focus group discussion, Appipuram, Andhra Pradesh India has experienced accelerating growth in the last 10 years, yet millions of Indians remain mired in poverty. Why? Most books on growth and poverty reduction are dominated by the perspectives of policy makers and academic experts. 'Moving Out of Poverty: The Promise of Empowerment and Democracy in India' brings together the voices of poor men and women from 300 villages across Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, as it seeks to understand how these people have managed to escape poverty, while others remain stuck, and still others fall into poverty. The study explores the role of institutions such as family, markets and local panchayats, and factors such as aspiration, empowerment, social exclusion and conflict, health and asset accumulation, in explaining escape from poverty and falling into poverty.

The book examines India s experience with poverty reduction in a period of rapid economic growth. Marshalling evidence from multiple sources of survey data and drawing on new methods, the book asks how India s structural transformation - from rural to urban, and from agriculture to nonfarm sectors - is impacting poverty. Our analysis suggests that since the early 1990s, urban growth has emerged as a much more important driver of poverty reduction than in the past. We focus in particular on the role of small and medium size conurbations in India, both as the urban sub-sector in which urban poverty is overwhelmingly concentrated, and as a sub-sector that could potentially stimulate rural-based poverty reduction. Second, in rural areas, we focus on the nature of intersectoral transformation out of agriculture into the nonfarm economy. Stagnation in agriculture has been accompanied by dynamism in the nonfarm sector, but there is much debate about whether the growth seen has been a symptom of agrarian distress or a source of poverty reduction. Finally, alongside the accelerating economic growth and the highly visible transformation that is occurring in India s major cities, inequality is on the rise. This is raising concern that economic growth in India has by-passed significant segments of the population. The third theme on social exclusion asks if, despite the dramatic growth, historically grounded inequalities along lines of caste, tribe and gender have persisted. This book would be of interest for policymakers, researchers, non-governmental organizations, and international agencies from India and abroad--who wish to know more about India s experience of the last two decades in reducing poverty.

Focusing on the nature and politics of chronic poverty in India, this book provides an analysis of poverty reduction policies from a chronic poverty perspective. Using quantitative and qualitative data, the volume offers an account of the major causes and consequences of chronic poverty. Among other concerns the book explores: the phenomenon of chronic poverty among rural casual labourers; the effect of involuntary displacement and relocation on marginal groups that are chronically poor; the opportunities afforded by technology for empowerment of the poor and the underprivileged; and possible ways and means to strengthen existing safety nets for the vulnerable section of India′s population.

After two decades of marketizing, an array of national and international actors have become concerned with growing global inequality, the failure to reduce the numbers of very poor people in the world, and a perceived global backlash against international economic institutions. This new concern with poverty reduction and the political participation of excluded groups has set the stage for a new politics of inclusion within nations and in the international arena. The essays in this volume explore what forms the new politics of inclusion can take in low- and middle-income countries. The contributors favor a polity-centered approach that focuses on the political capacities of social and state actors to negotiate large-scale collective solutions and that highlights various possible strategies to lift large numbers of people out of poverty and political subordination. The contributors suggest there is little basis for the radical polycentrism that colors so much contemporary development thought. They focus on how the political capabilities of different societal and state actors develop over time and how their development is influenced by state action and a variety of institutional and other factors. The final chapter draws insightful conclusions about the political limitations and opportunities presented by current international discourse on poverty. Peter P. Houtzager is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. He has been a visiting scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies, University of California, Berkeley, visiting lecturer at Stanford University, and lecturer at St. Mary's College. A political scientist with broad training in comparative politics and historical-institutional analysis, he has written extensively on the institutional roots of collective action. Mick Moore is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, as well as Director of the Centre for the Future State. He has been a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His professional interests include political and institutional aspects of poverty reduction and of economic policy and performance, the politics and administration of development, and good government.