t He quality of life that a person leads depends critically on where it is led. even taking into account levels of economic development, the chances of an individual surviving infancy, growing up literate, or living a healthy, long life vary dramatically across regions of the world, in different countries, and within the same country. What are the causes of such variations in well-being? this is a question of urgent relevance. millions of children die annually from malnourishment and vaccinepreventable diseases and over one-fifth of the total world population cannot read or write. moreover, it is now acknowledged that expanding human capabilities trump capital accumulation as a driver of economic growth.this article points to a factor that has been virtually ignored in the vast scholarship on social welfare and development-the solidarity that emerges from a sense of shared identity. a sense of oneness with a political community can be a key driver of differences in social policy and welfare. Such an argument marks a radical departure from the traditional emphasis on the role of class 1 as well as from the dominant view of the negative implications of identity in the scholarship on welfare.2 i * i would like to acknowledge the helpful suggestions for improving this work from atul Kohli, mark beissinger, melani cammett, Sarah chartock, pradeep chhibber, Jorge dominguez, ronald Herring, peter Hall, devesh Kapur, evan lieberman, elizabeth perry, Susan pharr, dan posner, rachel riedl, Hillel Soifer, Kathy thelen, lily tsai, maya tudor, ashutosh varshney, Steven Wilkinson, deborah Yashar, daniel Ziblatt, adam Ziegfeld, and three anonymous reviewers. i am grateful to Sonia bhalotra and rohini Somanathan for sharing their data. i thank raymond Hicks, tsering Wangyal Shawa, and gyanesh Kudaisya for their help, respectively, with the data, gis maps, and acquiring the rights to Shankar's cartoon; and aditya dasgupta, Jordan Sessler, and tess Wise for research assistance. i am also grateful to feedback from presentations at Yale, berkeley, the university of pennsylvania, Harvard, and mit, and at the annual meeting of the american political Science association. most importantly, i am deeply grateful to the staff of the national archives of india and the center for development Studies in thiruvananthapuram for their help. the research was made possible by a grant from the american institute of indian Studies. all errors are mine alone.