In the context of strikingly low literacy rates among Indian women and low caste popultaion, the paper explores whether and how far the interests of the marginalised poor are undermined by the dominant elite consisting mainly of the landed and the capitalists. We distinguish the dominant elite...

In the context of strikingly low literacy rates among Indian women and low caste population, the paper explores whether and how far the interests of the marginalized poor are undermined by the dominant elite consisting mainly of the landed and the capitalists. We distinguish the dominant elite...

Literacy rates continue to be strikingly low among women and low caste population compared to the general population not only in any Indian state, but more so in the worst performing ones. The present paper offers an explanation of this disparate development in terms of the hypothesis of elite...

Within the Barro (1990) model of productive public services, but with the inclusion of public debt, we derive and characterize on the balanced growth path, a set of welfare-maximizing fiscal rules under two budgetary regimes - one with only the standard dynamic government budget constraint, and...

In this paper we examine the implication of a simple class of fiscal rules for long-run economic growth and welfare. The Golden Rule of Public Finance that we examine is motivated by institutional arrangements in countries such as Germany and the UK. We find that rules that seek to limit...

The paper examines the effect of inequality on growth among the subnational states in India. Theoretically, growth of the regional economy is driven by productive public investment in the provision of health and education services financed by a linear output tax, and the optimum tax rate is...

In an endogenous growth model with two public services with differing productivities, this paper analytically characterises optimal fiscal policy for a decentralised economy, whereby the optimal values of the growth rate, tax rate and expenditure shares on the two public goods are linked...

Despite more than four decades of planning efforts with an emphasis on balanced regional development, inter- and intra-state disparities in key indicators of quality of life in India are striking. Using Indian state- level data for the period 1960-92, the present paper examines the nature of...