Making India Work
The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy

A unique analysis of India's welfare regime, exploring its development against a backdrop of nation-building and democratisation.

Louise Tillin (Author)

9781009464390, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 February 2025

248 pages
23.6 x 16.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.51 kg

'Making India Work is essential reading for scholars and students of welfare states in India and beyond. Above all, this must be read in India by our commentariat who in the court of public opinion have been far too quick to delegitimise essential welfare investments as 'freebies' and 'revdis'. The debate must now shift to asking deeper questions about our economy and democracy.' Yamini Aiyar, The India Forum

Welfare politics take centre stage in India's electoral landscape today. Direct benefits and employment generation form the mainstays of social provision, while most citizens lack dependable rights to sickness leave, pensions, maternity benefits or unemployment insurance. But how did this system evolve? Louise Tillin traces the origins and development of India's welfare regime, recovering a history previously relegated to the margins of scholarship on the political economy of development. Her deeply researched analysis, spanning from the early twentieth century to the present, captures long-term patterns of continuity and change against a backdrop of nation-building, economic change, and democratisation. Making India Work demonstrates that while patronage and resource constraints have undermined the provision of public goods, Indian workers, employers, politicians and bureaucrats have long debated what an Indian 'welfare state' should look like. The ideas and principles shaping earlier policies remain influential today.

1. Introduction: the shaping of a welfare regime
2. Origins, expansion and reform: India's welfare regime in historical perspective
Part I. Building a National Economy: Regulating Internal Competition: 3. In the shadow of sickness: Bombay and the origins of social insurance
4. World war two, Tripartism and a National welfare State for industrial workers
Part II. Putting India to Work: 5. A girding of loins: planning and the duty to work in the postcolonial State
6. Electoral competition and the expansion of social policy to rural areas: rural employment guarantee as social security
Part III. Liberalisation and Welfare in a Multi-level Democracy: 7. Liberalisation and the 'social safety net'
8. Welfare, rights and the market in the post-congress polity, 1998-2014
9. Conclusion: the past and future of the welfare State in India
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]