Working Paper Series Growth and Deprivation in India: What Does Recent Data Say? Growth and Deprivation in India: What Does Recent Data Say? *

Abstract We investigate the relationship between growth and deprivation in India, an issue of immense interest. Given the continuing controversy in India over poverty lines, we use a framework that rigorously assesses the impact of growth on the poor over a range of poverty lines. Using National Sample Surveys on consumption expenditure, we show that while growth has "trickled down" in both rural and urban areas, it has not been in favour of the poor. In urban areas, growth has been "anti-poor." We extend this methodology to incorporate sub-groups and consider disadvantaged caste groups and poorer/lower classes. We find that growth has not been in favour of the poor among these groups. Our findings raise serious concerns about the "inclusiveness" of Indian growth. Our analysis also has implications for pro-poor growth and the measurement of inequality

Impediments to contract enforcement in day labour markets: A Perspective from India

In developing countries, lack of formal contract enforcement mechanisms is compensated by informal or relational governance enforced through trust, kinship, reputation, etc. This paper focuses on one such setting in India's urban informal economy: the 'day labour' market for casual labour. We survey seven such markets in Navi Mumbai (a city on the outskirts of Mumbai), and find considerable incidence of contract enforcement problems in the form of employers reneging on wage payments to labourers. We find that payments to labourers with access to social networks and a record of work done are less likely to be reneged. Further, consistent with the literature on the limits of relation-based contract enforcement, we find that labourers in large markets, with greater linguistic and caste-based diversity, are more likely to be reneged. We argue that interventions aimed at facilitating access to formal mechanisms might help overcome some of the limitations with relation-based enforcement

Growth and deprivation in India: What does recent data say?

We investigate the relationship between growth and deprivation in India, an issue of immense interest. Given the continuing controversy in India over poverty lines, we use a framework that rigorously assesses the impact of growth on the poor over a range of poverty lines. Using National sample Surveys on consumption expenditure, we show that while growth has "trickled down" in both rural and urban areas, it has not been in favor of the poor. In urban areas, growth has been "anti-poor." We extend this methodology to incorporate sub-groups and consider disadvantaged caste groups and poorer/lower classes. We find that growth has not been in favor of the poor among these groups. Our findings raise serious concerns about the "inclusiveness" of Indian growth. Our analysis also has implications for pro-poor growth and the measurement of inequality

Can social safety nets protect public health? The effect of India’s workfare and foodgrain subsidy programmes on anaemia

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 for the prevalence of anaemia, examining whether individuals in districts with a broader reach of these mega-programmes are less likely to be anaemic. Using an Instrumental Variable (IV) approach to address the endogeneity of programme scale, we find that an individual residing in a district where the programmes have broader reach is less likely to suffer from all forms of anaemia and has a lower haemoglobin deficit from the benchmark suggested by the World Health Organisation (WHO) – ranging between 0.91 to 6.2 percentage points for a 10 percentage point expansion in programme scale. While the PDS seems to be more effective in reducing the incidence of mild anaemia than moderate or severe anaemia, while the strength of effects for MGNREGA seem to be the least for mild. These are catch-all effects that represent partial and general equilibrium impacts through multiple pathways. Programme interaction effects suggest the MGNREGA and PDS may be substitutes – associated improvements in anaemia for regions with higher PDS access (MGNREGA participation) are more pronounced when the scale of MGNREGA participation (PDS access) is low. There exist nonlinearities in these relationships, with the efficacy of both programmes varying across scales of implementation