As of 2006, over 43% of Indian children under five were malnourished, a rate that has barely budged since the early 1990s. This gives India the dubious distinction of having the highest percentage of malnourished children in the world. There are at least 53 poorer countries with lower malnutrition rates, including Bangladesh, Nepal, Haiti and several African countries. At Independence, India was poor, so it wasn’t thought possible to guarantee...

Budget 2011-12 and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. THREE decades ago, in the early years of the Special Component Plan (SCP) for Scheduled Castes – very recently renamed inappropriately as Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan (SCSP) – Indira Gandhi on her return as Prime Minister wrote two historical D.O. letters dated March 12, 1980, one to Central Ministers and the other to State Chief Ministers, regarding the SCP in the Central...

Over the last couple of years, the Delhi government's budgets had focussed largely on beefing up the city's physical infrastructure in time for the Commonwealth Games. With the Games over, the budget for 2011-12, the first presented by Sheila Dikshit, shifted focus to Social Infrastructure with welfare measures in health and education targetted at the school-going. Welfare measures apart, the budget cited environmental concerns to hike taxes on diesel vehicles and...

This book discusses a new poverty agenda for Asia and the role of social policies in economic transformation and reducing poverty. The poverty-reduction agenda is well known. So is the debate over poverty. No one disputes the fact that poverty of income (or expenditure, as countries such as India do not collect household data on income) is an imperfect measure of poverty, as there are non-income dimensions, too. Consequently, we...

Food inflation, hovering in the double digits, may play spoilsport to India’s ability to continue its rapid economic growth. It is truly troubling that food still consumes half of the expenditure of the average Indian household. No wonder a sharp spike in onion prices has the potential to upset the political calculus of social stability. India’s biggest challenge still remains ensuring food and nutritional security to its masses. Notwithstanding the nation’s...