Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy (Cambridge University Press)
UoN Asia Research Institute is pleased to present a talk on Professor Louise Tillin's book (Professor of Politics, King’s India Institute, King’s College London).
Date: 30 November
Time: 4-5.30pm
Location: D12 Monica Partridge
Abstract
In 1948, India passed legislation to create a contributory sickness insurance scheme for industrial workers. India did so while its constituent assembly was still deliberating over the design of the country’s future constitution, in which famously social and economic rights were relegated to the non-justiciable Directive Principles. Yet the hopes of some Constituent Assembly members that the Employees State Insurance (ESI) Act would serve as the foundation stone from which a wider welfare state would grow were soon curtailed with the decision to limit the growth of labour-intensive large scale manufacturing in the postcolonial era of planning. Rather than serving as the first step on the road to a more universal welfare state, the ESI Act came to mark the boundaries of welfare.
India today grapples with the pressing problem of under-employment for its youthful population, and its political class debates the legitimacy of different welfare programmes, denigrated variously as ‘doles’ or ‘freebies’. This talk – based on a forthcoming book – will look back over the last century of debates and decisions about what an Indian ‘welfare state’ should look like. It will argue that the design of India’s welfare architecture has long been shaped by dilemmas about employment generation. Furthermore, that – contrary a long line of political economy scholarship that has treated social policy as marginal to wider developments – welfare policies have been an integral component of the building of both India’s national economy and polity.
To register please click HERE.
Biography
Louise Tillin is a Professor of Politics in the King’s India Institute.
Louise’s research interests span federalism, democracy and territorial politics in India, and the history and politics of social policy design and implementation. Her books include Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins (Hurst & Co/Oxford University Press, 2013), Politics of Welfare: Comparisons across Indian States, edited with Rajeshwari Deshpande and KK Kailash (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2015), Indian Federalism (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2019) and The Politics of Poverty Reduction in India: The UPA Government, 2004 to 2014 (with James Chiriyankandath, Diego Maiorano and James Manor) (New Delhi, Orient Blackswan, 2020).
Other recent research, supported by the British Academy and conducted in collaboration with Oliver Heath, Sanjay Kumar, Jyoti Mishra and Sandhya Venkateswaran, has examined electoral perceptions around health in India. A summary of this research can be accessed here.
Louise has previously led research projects on subnational comparative politics and social policy in India (British Academy International Partnership, with Lokniti/CSDS), on explaining electoral change in urban and rural India (Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)), and on India’s Political Economy (UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) Trilateral Partnership with UC Berkeley and Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR). Between 2013-7, she was part of a multi-country research programme on the politics of reducing poverty and inequality across Brazil, China, India and South Africa supported by the ESRC. Louise held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2018-19) for a project on Welfare and Capitalism in India: A Political History. She was also the King’s Principal Investigator on the Horizon 2020 European Training Network Global India led by Dublin City University. She is Managing Editor of the journal Regional and Federal Studies, and an editorial advisory board member of Pacific Affairs.
Before joining King’s in 2011, Louise was Joyce Lambert Research Fellow in Politics at Newnham College, Cambridge. Louise holds a DPhil in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Sussex. She was a Thouron Scholar (MA South Asia Regional Studies) at the University of Pennsylvania and has a BA (Hons) History from Cambridge.
Other recent research, supported by the British Academy and conducted in collaboration with Oliver Heath, Sanjay Kumar, Jyoti Mishra and Sandhya Venkateswaran, has examined electoral perceptions around health in India. A summary of this research can be accessed here.
Louise has previously led research projects on subnational comparative politics and social policy in India (British Academy International Partnership, with Lokniti/CSDS), on explaining electoral change in urban and rural India (Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)), and on India’s Political Economy (UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) Trilateral Partnership with UC Berkeley and Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR). Between 2013-7, she was part of a multi-country research programme on the politics of reducing poverty and inequality across Brazil, China, India and South Africa supported by the ESRC. Louise held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2018-19) for a project on Welfare and Capitalism in India: A Political History. She was also the King’s Principal Investigator on the Horizon 2020 European Training Network Global India led by Dublin City University. She is Managing Editor of the journal Regional and Federal Studies, and an editorial advisory board member of Pacific Affairs.
Before joining King’s in 2011, Louise was Joyce Lambert Research Fellow in Politics at Newnham College, Cambridge. Louise holds a DPhil in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Sussex. She was a Thouron Scholar (MA South Asia Regional Studies) at the University of Pennsylvania and has a BA (Hons) History from Cambridge.
Chaired by Dr Carole Spary, UoNARI Director and Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Science, UoN