Government success, failure of the market: a case study of rural India

Contrary to current thinking, in this paper we argue that a careful examination of government intervention suggests that governments did not fail in all their interventions. For example, in terms of achieving self-sufficiency in food requirements, Indian government intervention was highly successful. However, in terms of solving rural poverty, the government left it to the market, and the market failed to resolve the poverty problem. Rural poverty, instead of falling, increased and subsequently, the government had to intervene to address the poverty.