Persistent Poverty and Path Dependency: Agrarian Reform: Lessons from the United States and India

Summaries The historical experience of the United States, where aggregate wealth multiplied in abundance but persistent poverty is glaring, offers concrete illustration that growth is not a sufficient condition for poverty alleviation in the transition from agrarian society. In contrast, the State of Kerala in South India abolished an agrarian system based on agrestic serfdom and slavery in a compressed time period and has been notably successful in reducing the incidence of poverty despite income and growth rates well below the Indian mean. Though sometimes romanticised, the ‘Kerala model’ offers both positive and negative lessons from its thorough agrarian reform. Though less prominent in public discourse after the end of the Cold War, agrarian reform still offers significant poverty reduction advantages in comparison with alternatives

The politics and bureaucratics of rural public works: Maharashtra's employment guaranteed scheme

The Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme stands out among rural public works programmes in developing countries for its size, longevity, the generosity of its funding arrangements, and the political sophistication of its design. Its mission is highly ambitious: to supply employment flexibly and rapidly by opening and closing public works in response to local, unpredictable weather variations in a poor agrarian economy. We explore the political factors that account for changes in its performance over more than 30 years, and identify the political lessons for the design of similar programmes elsewhere.

The politics and practicalities of universalism: towards a citizen-centred perspective on social protection

The long-standing divide between universal and residual approaches in the field of social policy is also evident in the emerging agenda around social protection. Underpinning this divide are contrasting worldviews. Arguments in favour of residual approaches are frequently couched in a market-centred discourse that stresses efficiency, incentives and a cost-benefit calculus, while those advocating universalism favour a state-centred discourse and normative arguments. This article attempts to bridge the divide by offering a pragmatic argument for incremental universalism that stresses the responsibilities as well as rights associated with citizenship, and suggests the need to factor in wider economic and social externalities in estimating both costs and benefits

Making sense of the local state: rent-seeking, vernacular society and the employment assurance scheme in eastern India

This paper opens a window on the local state in eastern India. It studies the ways in which government officers in five districts of Bihar and West Bengal re-shaped one of India's major poverty alleviation programmes, the Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS). District and Block-level officials in Bihar converted a participatory programme of employment generation into a scheme for the construction of durable assets. Many poorer men and women obtained no work under the EAS. Outside Midnapore District, West Bengal, members of the rural poor were unaware of their right to demand work from the state. The acts of translation that we document were largely inspired by a fear of corruption on the part of junior officials. District and Block-level officials in Bihar worried that labour-intensive schemes would increase opportunities for rent-seeking and simple looting. That principals sought to constrain the actions of agents in this way suggests a weakness in the model of rent-seeking behaviour favoured by some economists. That the EAS was re-worked by well-educated, English-speaking government officials--and not by their subordinates--also suggests the need for refinement of a body of work on the 'vernacular' nature of the local state. No sharp distinction between elite and vernacular lifeworlds is evident in the field area