As much as 91% of India’s workforce of 475 million is informal, lacking social insurance. The latest effort on social security is India’s Social Security Code 2020, which merges eight existing laws. The paper finds the Code wanting by comparing it with the principles that should guide social...

Amidst the bleak picture of increasing joblessness and indebtedness presented by employment surveys and debt surveys, a minimum standard of living for India's poor seems to be under threat. The sudden exogenous shock of COVID-19 to the incomes of the poor has made the case of a minimum income...

Ensuring accountability of local functionaries for effective delivery of basic social services has been a perennial problem of development. Since the poor have limited prospects of 'exit', 'voice' alone works to ensure effectiveness of service delivery. Accountability of lower-level...

It is often said that economic growth promotes poverty reduction, social development and child welfare, but it is rarely argued that this conditional relationship applies in reverse. Direct action to improve child health and education may be as strong as economic growth in reducing...