The purpose of this paper is to examine the poverty situation in West Bengal in a multidimensional framework and to explore possible strategies towards reduction of poverty in the state, keeping in view the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). [IDSK OP 20].

Female work participation in West Bengal is one of the lowest among all the states in India. However, it varies widely across the state’s 341 blocks. An analysis of some block level characteristics based on Census 2001 data show that female work participation varies inversely with the...

The economist’s conceptualisation of inequality in terms of interpersonal distribution of income or wealth, and the tradition of measurement of inequality that follows from this conceptualisation have not paid adequate attention to the need for reckoning inequality across social groups....

This paper is about the discursive aspects of reform debates, more particularly about their rhetorical forms. In the debates on economic reforms in India, communities of scholars seem to have been talking past each other, each side equally convinced that it has the ‘Truthâ€. Persistent...

This paper puts forward the argument that the living arrangement of a disabled individual, or her/his marital status in particular, can be taken as a proxy for some very important functionings that constitute her/his well-being, viz. emotions (being able to have attachments to others, able to...

Measuring well-being of an Individual based on his/her levels of functionings raises the following problem; Two vectors representing two individuals' achieved levels of functionings cannot be ranked unless one vector dominates the other, One solution is to combine the elements of vector into...