This book brings together the key papers in the Indian poverty debate, together with a new introduction that provides an overview and synthesis. The collection also contains some seminal papers that link the current debates to the earlier literature, as w

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.

Poverty in India is intimately connected with caste, untouchability, colonialism and indentured servitude, inseparable from the international experience of slavery and race. Focusing on historical and modern practices, this book goes beyond traditional economic approaches to poverty and demonstrates its genesis in exclusion, isolation, domination and extraction resulting in the removal of human and economic rights. Examining cash and asset transfers, as well as the enhancement of women's rights, primary health and education, it scrutinizes inadequacies in compensatory policies for redressing the balance. This is an original interdisciplinary contribution that offers bold domestic and international policies anchored in human radicalism to eradicate poverty.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a pronounced setback in the fight against global poverty—likely the largest setback since World War II. Many low- and middle-income countries have yet to see a full recovery. High indebtedness in many countries has hindered a swift recovery, while rising food and energy prices—fueled in part by conflict and climate shocks—have made a return to progress on poverty reduction more challenging than ever. These setbacks have altered the trajectory of poverty reduction in large and lasting ways. The world is significantly off course on the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.The year 2020 also marked a historic turning point as decades of global income convergence gaveway to global divergence as the world’s poorest people were hardest hit. The richest people have recovered from the pandemic at a faster pace, further exacerbating differences. These diverging fortunes between the global rich and poor ushered in the first rise in global inequality in decades. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022: Correcting Course provides the first comprehensive analysis of the pandemic’s toll on poverty in developing countries.It identifies how governments can optimize fiscal policy to help correct course. Fiscal policies offset the impact of COVID-19 on poverty in many high-income countries, but those policies offset barely onequarter of the pandemic’s impact in low-income countries and lower-middle-income countries. Improving support to households as crises continue will require reorienting protective spending away from generally regressive and inefficient subsidies and toward a direct transfer support system—a first key priority. Reorienting fiscal spending toward supporting growth is a second key priority identified by the report. Some of the highest-value public spending often pays out decades later. Amid crises, it is difficult to protect such investments, but it is essential to do so. Finally, it is not enough just to spend wisely—when additional revenue does need to be mobilized, it must be done in a way that minimizes reductions in poor people’s incomes. The report highlights how exploring the underused forms of progressive taxation and increasing the efficiency of tax collection can help in this regard. Poverty and Shared Prosperity is a biennial series that reports on global trends in poverty and shared prosperity. Each report also explores a central challenge to poverty reduction and boosting shared prosperity, assessing what works well and what does not in different settings. By bringing together the latest evidence, this corporate flagship report provides a foundation for informed advocacy around ending extreme poverty and improving the lives of the poorest in every country in the world. For more information, please visit worldbank.org/poverty-and-shared-prosperity.

The embarrassing living conditions of more than one billion poor people in developing countries in combination with the increasing gap of living standards between the poor and the rich, has provided a strong motivation for development policy to change this situation. From its beginning, policy has aimed for stimulating economic growth in order to improve living conditions for everyone. The endurance of poverty, however, has motivated to extend the traditional »growth is good for the poor« by a more targeted policy that combines growth with a particular emphasis on improving the situation of the poor. This is exactly the objective of »pro-poor growth«, a term that became popular during the late 1990s and which seemed to dominate the stage with the propagation of the Millennium Development Goals, including its goal to halve poverty by 2015. This volume contains six papers that address various core issues of pro-poor growth policies. These papers were presented at the annual meeting of the Research Committee Development Economics (Ausschuss Entwicklungsländer des Vereins für Socialpolitik) in 2005. Papers were lively discussed at the meeting and later on improved by comments from anonymous referees. All authors have done extensive research in the field of pro-poor growth, including field studies. Accordingly, their contributions - reflecting this knowledge and proficiency - pick up recent developments in the field. The discussion of most appropriate pro-poor growth policies is an ongoing process which has been documented by a growing literature. The value added of the present volume is obviously not to be more comprehensive than others but rather to continue the line of work by bringing some recent research findings - with a focus on policy relevance and empirical substantiation - to a broader audience.

The Risk of India: Its Transformation from Poverty to Prosperity is an extremely interesting read. The book speaks not only to the mind and intellect but also to the heart as it clearly demonstrates that economic development is above all a question of people. It also shows that the Indian society, and particularly its youth, is much more open to changes than its political and bureaucratic class, and would welcome a third wave of reforms that would help the poor to benefit from economic progress. I strongly recommend this book. It offers a very unique and rich description of today's India from the author's perspective and many well chosen anecdotes. - Colette Mathur, Director World Economic Forum This fascinating work weaves together a set of seemingly diverse events into an intricate tapestry capturing the essence and purpose of emerging India. It is also an inspiration to people in "Challenged" economies that the power of honest entrepreneurship can bring about a greater transformation than the best intentions of any government. Well-researched and well-written, this book is a good guide for developing countries to leverage the potential of people and its inherent strengths. It also brings out the challenge for India that more reforms are necessary, not less. - Nandan M Nilekani, CEO & Managing Director Infosys Technologies Limited The Rise of India is an insightful and engaging story of India before and after the 1991 reforms. There are many academic tomes on India's reforms but none is as comprehensive, lucid, and earthy. Practicing "soft hearts, hard heads" Philosophy with anecdotes and personal experiences, the author builds a compelling case for further liberalization and reforms. This book is a must read for all policy makers, students of economics, and activists of all stripes. read, understand, and become part of the revolution-a continued rise of India! - Parth J. Shah, President, Centre for Civil Society

This volume explores how difference is constructed, manifested, mobilised and obscured in socially uneven societies, particularly those fuelled by neoliberal economic growth in the recent years.The book approaches difference as a double edged concept that allows one to make sense of the tensions that are played out betweencosmopolitan convergence andmulticultural diversity, between expanding middle classes and increasingly disenfranchised poor groups, between the global and the local. The chapters in this volume present a series of empirical explorations of how difference is articulated, desired, levelled, governed and even subverted in the socio-economically uneven landscapes of India and China. They examine how difference emerges out of daily practice, categorisation processes, dividing practices, nation building efforts and identity projects.Through these empirical studies, we see how difference is articulated along a number of axes: differentiations of groups or persons according to hierarchies of superiority/inferiority; the demarcation of difference as something that is potentially disruptive and therefore in need of containment; thecelebration of difference as diversity, and finally, the ways in which difference comes to be internalised in the shaping of individual identities. Another common theme that binds a number of contributions is the exploration of the role of the state in constructing and controlling these differences, and the ways in which these interventions rearrange the social-political landscapes.This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Winner of the International Studies in Poverty Prize awarded by the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) and Zed Books Poverty has become the central focus of global development efforts, with a vast body of research and funding dedicated to its alleviation. And yet, the field of poverty studies remains deeply ideological and has been used to justify wealth and power within the prevailing world order. Andrew Martin Fischer clarifies this deeply political character, from conceptions and measures of poverty through to their application as policies. Poverty as Ideology shows how our dominant approaches to poverty studies have, in fact, served to reinforce the prevailing neoliberal ideology while neglecting the wider interests of social justice that are fundamental to creating more equitable societies. Instead, our development policies have created a ‘poverty industry’ that obscures the dynamic reproductions of poverty within contemporary capitalist development and promotes segregation in the name of science and charity. Fischer argues that an effective and lasting solution to global poverty requires us to reorient our efforts away from current fixations on productivity and towards more equitable distributions of wealth and resources. This provocative work offers a radical new approach to understanding poverty based on a comprehensive and accessible critique of key concepts and research methods. It upends much of the received wisdom to provide an invaluable resource for students, teachers and researchers across the social sciences.