India’s emerging social policy paradigm: productive, protective or what?

ABSTRACT

This article presents a cross-disciplinary review of state-of-the-art explorations of India’s emerging social policy paradigm during the two recent Centre/Left Congress/United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments (2004–2009, 2009–2014). In doing so, it revises existing classifications of social policy activity in India by tracing quantitative inputs and outcomes over time and assessing the extension of social rights via newly introduced social policy programmes. We find little evidence that India has moved beyond its failing informal welfare regime features characterized by a weakly developed mix of productive–protective welfare policy interventions, comparatively low social expenditure and mixed social outcomes. Furthermore, testing the transformative character of social policy innovations, we conclude that India’s approach to social protection has so far remained essentially residual, even minimalist, in character. Addressing the key developmental challenges India faces will therefore necessitate further reaching changes towards a more encompassing and inclusive social model that will in turn help to better generate productive assets among the Indian poor.

KEYWORDS:

• Productive welfare
• social protection
• social rights
• India

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stefan Kühner

Stefan Kühner is Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Policy Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Prof. Kühner’s academic interest centers on comparative and global social policy with particular emphasis on the policies and politics of productive and protective welfare in historical perspective.

Keerty Nakray

Dr. Keerty Nakray is an Associate Professor at Jindal Global Law School in NCRDelhi, India and Visiting Fellow at the Feinstein International Center, Tufts University. Dr. Nakray has published in leading journals on gender budgets, child sensitive budgets and comparative social policy. She was the Book Reviews Editor of the Journal of South Asian Development (2013-16) and serves on the editorial board of Journal of Gender Studies (UK) and the International Advisory Board of Social Policy and Society (UK).