The Transformation of India's Welfare Regime

Tillin's Book Finds That Decisions Taken Soon After Independence Had Enduring Consequences

- HT Correspondent

NEW DELHI: In India today, so many political debates are focused on welfare and welfarism. It seems that state after state is competing to offer the most electorally attractive benefits to its voters. The central government, for its part, has pioneered a new model of social welfare built around digital identification and direct cash transfers to needy households.

A new book by scholar Louise Tillin, Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy, examines the development of India's welfare state over the last century from the early decades of the 20th century to the present. In so doing, it recovers a history previously relegated to the margins of scholarship on the political economy of development.

Tillin spoke about her book on a recent episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Till, who serves as a professor of politics in the King's India Institute at King's College London, is one of the world's leading experts on Indian federalism, subnational comparative politics, and social policy.