Balancing Democracy and Globalisation: The Role of the State in Poverty Alleviation in India

Lakha, Salim; Taneja, Pradeep

doi:10.1080/00856400903374319

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…In addition, the program decreases days in nonfarm self‐employment in the last week by approximately 3.3% (the pre‐program mean was 0.617). I then show that the program's effects are concentrated in the dry season, consistent with prior evidence of the program's wage impacts (Imbert and Papp 2015) and with the de facto seasonal implementation of the program (Lakha and Taneja 2009; Sharma 2009; Sukhtankar 2016). There is an insignificant change in days of nonfarm self‐employment in the rainy season but a large and statistically significant effect in the dry season: NREGS decreases days of nonfarm self‐employment by 4.7% (the pre‐program mean was 0.642).…”

supporting

confidence: 77%

Moving Up or Just Surviving? Nonfarm Self‐Employment in India

Merfeld¹

2019

American J Agri Economics

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The classical economic development literature argues that growth is accompanied by a reduction in agriculture's share and an increase in nonagriculture's share of employment. Yet growth of the nonfarm sector does not necessarily signal increasing levels of development, as the sector may serve as subsistence employment for many individuals. This ambiguity is heightened by a surprising lack of microevidence regarding sectoral and occupational choice and, especially, how government policies impact these decisions. In this article, I make a simple observation regarding how nonfarm self-employment reacts to market conditions: households and individuals that enter into nonfarm self-employment for subsistence reasons are more likely to exit the sector when wages increase or when more stable employment becomes available. With this assumption as a starting point, I examine the effects of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which increased prevailing wages in rural India. The program significantly decreases days spent in nonfarm self-employment. In addition, the implied labor elasticity is three times higher than economy-wide estimates, suggesting rural nonfarm self-employment is a sector of last resort for many individuals. Additional analyses suggest this impact is driven primarily by two mechanisms: higher wages and alternative options for risk-management.

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confidence: 77%

Moving Up or Just Surviving? Nonfarm Self‐Employment in India

Merfeld¹

2019

American J Agri Economics

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“…The poor do not need to buy food at the market price and can buy food at a state-specified price below the market price. These measures have been implemented to a certain extent to ensure the basic needs of farmers [19].…”

Section: Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Intervention on Rural Poverty Alleviation: A Case Study Between China and India

Jia

2023

J. Soft. Comput. Decis. Anal.

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This paper decision analyctics the evolution of pro-poor development and research on pro-poor practices in China and India, taking rural poverty alleviation in both countries as an example. The research perspective is cast more towards the policy target groups and rural societies to gain a deeper understanding of the institutional and systemic factors that influence the choice and implementation of pro-poor policies, as well as the logic and interrelationships among different actors in the policy implementation network. The final conclusion is that the government should enter more into the life world of the poor, listen to their voices, understand at what level and to what extent their lives are affected by the implementation of pro-poor policies, and how the informal institutions of the vernacular society interact with the formal institutions in the process of policy implementation. This series of questions can help the government examine the theoretical and practical issues of rural poverty alleviation policies from a more comprehensive and historical perspective, which is important for promoting the practice of rural poverty alleviation policies.

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“…The 2004 general elections present an interesting example. Some analysts believe that common people's (particularly in rural areas) hardship and anger at the effects of economic liberalisation led to the incumbent National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) defeat as the Indian National Congress (INC) successfully made them electoral issues (Tummala, : 37–40; Sáez and Sinha, : 98; Lakha and Taneja, : 414–15). However, Asutosh Kumar, using dataset generated by the Centre for Studies of Developing Societies (CSDS) disagrees strongly with this view, claiming that very few people were aware of economic reforms, particularly the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SC/STs).…”

Section: The Hd Scenario In Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, it has also resulted in decreased leisure time and emotional problems like long detachment from home (Pankaj and Tankha, ). On the other hand, in Uttar Pradesh (UP), ‘feudal landlords’ prevented poor people accessing MGNREGA works (Lakha and Taneja, : 418–20). Auditing the performance of MGNREGA, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India found several shortcomings: job‐cards not issued; non‐availability of work even if job cards issued; non‐completion of work; non‐payment and delayed payment of wages in 23 states; faulty methods of data entry and storage; poor monitoring and ineffective social audit in many states; and also lack of firm governance by the Government (CAG Report, 2013).…”

Section: Legislation: Implications and Performancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democracy and human development: recent legislation in India

Ghosh¹

2016

Development Policy Review

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Human Development (HD) requires that development must accompany fundamental human concerns that make life worth living. It is surprising that despite being a democracy, India performs poorly on HD. In this backdrop, four pieces of legislation of different orientations have been passed since 1998–99: ‘Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana’, the ‘Right to Information’, the ‘National Rural Employment Guarantee Act’ and the ‘Right to Education’. Where successful, they have empowered the beneficiaries. Though not expressed as such, nor exclusively directed to this end, these pieces of legislation are bound together with democracy's demand for HD: they are influenced externally by various aspects of globalisation; internally, development is continuously interrogated by democracy, competitive politics and social activism.

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Balancing Democracy and Globalisation: The Role of the State in Poverty Alleviation in India

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Moving Up or Just Surviving? Nonfarm Self‐Employment in India

Moving Up or Just Surviving? Nonfarm Self‐Employment in India

Public Intervention on Rural Poverty Alleviation: A Case Study Between China and India

Democracy and human development: recent legislation in India

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