In June 1993, a socio-economic survey was conducted by the authors, of a sample of households residing in Santosh Nagar, a large slum adjacent to the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Goregaon, Mumbai. As part of this socio-economic survey, extensive information was collected...

In the wake of the economic reform programme undertaken since 1991, distributional issues have received considerable attention and policy concern. In pursuit of such concerns, the government has worked out an approach to the Eleventh Five Year Plan, which lays emphasis on, though without...

In the context of the current public policy focus on rising food prices and their implications for food security, this paper examines two major issues raised: (i) Universalization of the public distribution system; and (ii) its implications for procurement and buffer-stocks. This paper is based...

Public welfare policies in developing countries have a Rawlsian perspective; they seek to uplift the poor, the poorest of the poor in particular. Policies to enable the poor to catch up with the rich are generally two-fold, viz., inclusive growth, and redistributive (transfer) programmes. This...