In this article, we use data from the 2019 NES post-poll survey to assess the impact of BJP’s welfare schemes on voting behaviour. We demonstrate that compared to earlier elections, voters are more likely to give credit to the central government as opposed to state governments or local politicians for welfare schemes. This centralization is especially the case for some of the BJP’s new welfare programmes such as Ujjwala and the Jan Dhan Yojana. However, even earlier Congress-era schemes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Awas Yojana are now more associated with the central government. Schemes such as the Public Distribution System (PDS) and Old Age Pensions are still more likely to be associated with state governments. At the all-India level, we find some evidence that voters who received benefits under Ujjwala, Jan Dhan Yojana or Awas Yojana schemes were more likely to vote for the BJP, whereas recipients of pensions or MGNREGA were less likely to support the BJP.
This article examines the role of India's states in shaping the implementation and framing of social policy within India's federal system. Since the 2000s, the central government has overseen a substantial expansion of social welfare policies partly through a new push towards rights-based social provision. Most of the existing literature on the shift in social welfare coverage focuses on the national level. Yet, as we demonstrate in this article, it is India's states that are both responsible for an increasing proportion of total public expenditure on social welfare provision as well as determining the nature and effectiveness of that provision across space. In addition to being the level of implementation for centrally designed programs, some states have themselves innovated by designing new social welfare programs, expanding national schemes or improving the capacity of the local state to effectively implement programs in more rule-bound ways that are less subject to local political intermediation. Factors internal to political competition within states also impact the ways in which relationships between states and markets have been altered in the course of implementing a new generation of welfare programs. Drawing on a comparative research programme across pairs of Indian states, we identify three critical factors in explaining how state-level political environments shape social policy: the role of policy legacies in shaping policy frames; the role of social coalitions underpinning political party competition; and the role of political leaders in strengthening state capacity to achieve program goals. 2 States as Laboratories: The Politics of Social Welfare Policies in India Rajeshwari Deshpande, KK Kailash and Louise TillinThis article examines the role of India's states in shaping the implementation and framing of social policy within India's federal system. Since the 2000s, the central government has overseen a substantial expansion of social welfare policies partly through a new push towards rights-based social provision. Most of the existing literature on the shift in social welfare coverage focuses on the national level. Yet, as we demonstrate in this article, it is India's states that are both responsible for an increasing proportion of total public expenditure on social welfare provision as well as determining the nature and effectiveness of that provision across space. In addition to being the level of implementation for centrally designed programs, some states have themselves innovated by designing new social welfare programs, expanding national schemes or improving the capacity of the local state to effectively implement programs in more rule-bound ways that are less subject to local political intermediation. Factors internal to political competition within states also impact the ways in which relationships between states and markets have been altered in the course of implementing a new generation of welfare programs. Drawing on a comparative research programme across pairs of Indian states,...
If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
This paper is an attempt to investigate the multiple crises facing the Maratha community of Maharashtra. A dominant, intermediate peasantry caste that assumed control of the state's political apparatus in the fifties, the Marathas ordinarily resided politically within the Congress fold and thus facilitated the continued domination of the Congress party within the state. However, Maratha politics has been in flux over the past two decades or so. At the formal level, this dominant community has somehow managed to retain power in the electoral arena (Palshikar-Birmal, 2003)-though it may be about to lose it. And yet, at the more intricate levels of political competition, the long surviving, complex patterns of Maratha dominance stand challenged in several ways. One, the challenge is of loss of Maratha hegemony and consequent loss of leadership of the non-Maratha backward communities, the OBCs. The other challenge pertains to the inability of different factions of Marathas to negotiate peace and ensure their combined domination through power sharing. And the third was the internal crisis of disconnect between political elite and the Maratha community which further contribute to the loss of hegemony. Various consequences emerged from these crises. One was simply the dispersal of the Maratha elite across different parties. The other was the increased competitiveness of politics in the state and the decline of not only the Congress system, but of the Congress party in Maharashtra. The third was a growing chasm within the community between the neo-rich and the newly impoverished. These developments resulted into the discourse of backwardness that dominated the politics of the Maratha community in the more recent times. Very crudely, the claim that the community is backward constitutes a response to internal fragmentation and stratification as much as to processes of urbanization and liberalization. Therefore, the post-1980 developments need to be seen not merely as the trajectory of one caste but by situating them at the cusp of dynamics of democratic politics and state's economy, some trends in political economy of caste may also be detected.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.