In 2004, following the election of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), India began to introduce a series of legally enforceable rights to expand the economic security and social opportunities of its citizens. The flagship initiative of the UPA was the Mahatma Gandhi National...

Whether social transfers should be targeted or universal is an unsolved debate that is particularly relevant for the implementation of social protection schemes in developing countries. While the limited availability of public resources encourages targeting, the difficulty in identifying the...

Can large-scale social safety nets be nutrition sensitive even if they do not explicitly incorporate health and nutrition as programmatic goals? This paper focuses on the consequences of a countrywide guaranteed workfare programme (MGNREGA) and subsidised food distribution scheme (PDS) in India...