The focus of the paper is to review the Terms of Reference (TOR) of the Twelfth Finance Commission with special reference to Kerala. It also critically examines the emphasis on fiscal deficit reduction without paying attention to its quality and finds that this has led to the Centre and the...

Delays in project implementation and the attendant cost overruns have been a regular feature in the electric power sector in Kerala. Almost all the public projects, including the prestigious major hydroelectric project of Idukki, have been the unfortunate victims of time and cost overruns on...

The paper examines the question of food security viz-a-viz food availability and self sufficiency in production. Given the cropping pattern in Kerala it is unrealistic to expect food self-sufficiency. However, through a pro-poor public policy regime, Kerala has been able to enhance food security...

This paper examines the evolution of the institution of `Welfare Funds' for informal sector workers in the State of Kerala in India. The Kerala experience, which is now thirty years old, reflects what the workers in the informal sector could achieve in countries like India given the contemporary...

The present study is an attempt at a detailed diagnosis of the accumulated inefficiency in the Indian power sector, the consequent reform drives, and the political economy involved in these aspects. The discussion in the wider canvas of the national scenario is substantiated by focusing on the...

Our objectives in this paper are two-fold: an interpretation of the conception of poverty in its multidimensional existence and an explanation in this light of the development experiences of the State of Kerala in India. We discuss the various implications of the links and linkages among human...

This paper is complementary to my earlier paper on Public Intervention and Poverty Alleviation: Declining Incidence of Rural Poverty in Kerala (published in 1995). The objective of this paper is to go beyond the notion of income-poverty and consider the achievements in advancing basic human...

This paper attempts to construct a time series estimation of remittances from abroad to the Kerala economy for the period 1972 to 2000. It is now widely acknowledged that foreign remittances in the economy of the State of Kerala in India in the form of money sent by its workers in the Gulf...

True to the spirit of a social-democratic State, India had originally evolved her power development policy, and shouldered that responsibility, in line with the State's professed commitment to honouring and ensuring social security equations. Though the State Electricity Boards (SEBs) were...

In this paper, we attempt at an analysis of the political economy of the Indian power sector with special reference to Kerala in the light of a generic model of the political economy of public utilities we develop in the first part of the paper. The model seeks to explain the political economy...