Safety nets have emerged as one of the most important social policy instruments to alleviate poverty and livelihood risks in the global developmental discourse. According to a World Bank report, around 2.5 billion people globally are covered by safety nets, through which 36 percent of the very poor have managed to escape extreme poverty. 

The efficacy of the current set of programs, and potential innovations in them to correct for their current drawbacks -- targeting issues, pilferage, and efficient program design -- are at the bleeding edge of the contemporary discourse around India's safety net. Around 94 percent of India’s labor force is engaged in the informal sector, largely in agriculture, and is not formally covered under any employer based social benefits program. Two thirds of India’s population live in rural areas and nearly half of them work in agriculture. The rural poor live in high-risk environments, subject to droughts, floods and crop failure, while the rising share of urban poor face precarious livelihood, subjecting a greater share of the population to the risks of inter-generational poverty. While India has some of the the world’s largest anti-poverty programs -- in-kind food transfers and public works -- which provides food and livelihood to around 800 and 100 million people, respectively, it is also home to largest number of poor in the world despite spending around 1 percent of GDP on them. There are several complementary safety net programs such as the Mid-day Meal Scheme (MDMS), old-age pension scheme, and Ayushman-Bharat health care program, targeted to specific demographic groups to address health, malnutrition and related vulnerability. Despite these measures, India has nearly a quarter of the world’s poor population, largest number of malnourished children, and one of highest number of unemployed people in the world. As a remedial measure, policy debates are swiftly moving towards the use of cash transfers and other innovations designed around technological solutions to reduce corruption and improve efficiency in the delivery systems. Most notable is the introduction of technological solutions which integrates beneficiary bank accounts, their biometric markers and mobile phones, referred to as Jan Dhan-Aadhar-Mobile (JAM). 

A number of key question, yet, remain unaddressed when one tries to address how can the current set of social policies be transformed in an emerging economy, as diverse as India. How can safety nets be designed which not only serve a vast rural population but also cater to the rising urban poor? How can one sure that these schemes, which cater to such large and diverse population not subjected to errors of targeting? Most importantly, are these schemes a palliative cure or a tool for furthering India towards a long-term trajectory of resilient development? How does politics influence the idea of welfare in India? Is their sufficient state capacity to bring about improved governance and institutional reforms to create a semblance of welfare regime?

The book contributes in the following way:

Previous research on India’s safety net system has been limited to studying the various programs in isolation. There is a substantial body of work which has studied the impact of nutritional assistance programs like ICDS, in-kind food subsidies through PDS or general equilibrium effects of employment guarantee scheme, MGNREGS. However, a holistic perspective of India’s design of safety nets, its aim, scope, synergies and relevance for a rising India is largely missing in the literature. By focusing on individual programs, the extant scholarship may have “missed the forest for the trees”. The human development challenge in India, similar to most contexts, is not only a manifestation of poverty but is also associated with a wide variety of institutional factors, across an individual’s life cycle. As a result, the efficacy of safety net programs should be studied through its impact on the multifaceted aspects of human development – from maternal health, child nutrition, school enrolment and learning outcomes to livelihoods and wages at each stage of life. We therefore study the genesis of India’s safety net programs, that emerged as a result of immediate needs of the time, and examine its relevance to the present and future needs. 

Looking ahead towards 2050 and beyond, this book highlights the key challenges and scope for innovations in designing a future social safety net system for a rising and emerging India. We use India’s experience in implementing social safety nets and highlight the many lessons that India has to offer to the developing world on what works and what doesn’t. While, this scholarly contribution evaluates India’s social policy and provides important insights to policymakers for its future design, it is equally relevant for researchers and policymakers in other developing countries undergoing economic transformations. Learnings from India’s experience of safety net programs provides policy lessons for other developing countries in the process of reforming and building an efficient social safety net system. 

We provide a comprehensive analysis of India’s safety net system – its evolution, efficacy, political economy, regional disparities and potential for innovation. The specific focus lies on three key stories of India’s experience in addressing poverty, vulnerability to poverty and ensuring development resilience. We study multiple safety schemes addressing different aspects of development, with an overarching goal on how Indian social policy can move from schemes to a system that ensures a robust social protection. Instead of focusing on singular objectives of individual schemes, we evaluate their performance in terms of affecting welfare outcomes which accrue over a life cycle. We investigate whether these schemes have been able to help individuals or households to escape from chronic poverty and allowed them invest in human capabilities for intergenerational prosperity. More specifically, we evaluate India’s safety nets in terms of their effect on food security, poverty, child nutrition, human capital attainment, women empowerment, livelihood security, health outcomes, and inequality – various aspects of development resilience.

Most of the social programs in India were conceptualized in particular contexts, and therefore had specific objectives and intended beneficiaries. We study India’s social safety net system in terms of three aspects: scope, form and focus. Byscope, we mean the objectives of safety net programs, focus refers to the beneficiaries and form refers to the modality or the design.