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Is the Welfare State in Crisis? Debating the condition of the welfare state in India Contents Editorial Whither Welfare State? Kannamma Raman 5 Articles Privatising Education in India and the Withdrawing Welfare State 19 Anuya Warty The Co-existence of Widespread Hunger and the Right to Food Impact of the 32 Withdrawal of the Welfare State on Malnutrition Among Children in Karnataka Darshana Mitra, Mohammed Afeef, Vinay Sreenivasa, Narasimhappa TV Urban Informality: Symptomatic of an end of the Welfare State? 49 Akriti Bhatia Planning for Welfare in Post-Liberalisation India: The Challenges of 62 Building Human Capital Saumya Tewari Fixed Dose Combinations and their Ban: Issues of Concern 72 S. Srinivasan Geographical Indications and Farmers’ Welfare: Role of State in 90 Strengthening Governance N. Lalitha, Soumya Vinayan Re-examining the Delivery of Legal Aid in Mumbai 108 Vandita Morarka Commentaries The Welfare State – Challenges for Governance in India 127 Venkatesan Ramani Foundations of an Effective Self-Help System 140 Parth Shah Behavioural Re-design of Subsidies 150 V. Kumaraswamy The Benevolence of MGR, Subaltern Audiences and the Tamil Nadu State 166 Gopalan Ravindran Maternity Benefit Legislation: Reinforcing Patriarchy, Excluding Intersectionality 177 and Ignoring Impact Kirthi Jayakumar Book Review When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics 181 Ashwin Parthasarathy Women and Disaster in South Asia– Survival, Security and Development 186 Drashti Thakkar 1 Editor Managing Editor Kannamma Raman Padma Prakash Political Scientist Editor, eSocialSciences Retired Professor, University of Mumbai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Assistant Editors Ashwin Parthasarathy Research Scholar JPAC is jointly published by Forum for Research on Civic Affairs and eSocialSciences, Mumbai. 2 2 Consulting Editors Anupama Roy Parth Shah Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Centre for Civil Society, New Delhi, India. Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Phil Cam Anuradha Mundkur Adjunct faculty, School of Humanities Australian For International Development & Languages, University of New South Secondee to the Australian Civil Military Wales, Sydney, Australia. Centre, Canberra, Australia. Rainier Ibana Bhairav Acharya Philosophy Department, Ateneo de Manila Lawyer, India. University,Quezon City, Phillipines. D. Parthasarathy Ramkishen Rajan Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian ESSEC Business School, Asia-Pacific, Institute of Technology-Bombay, Mumbai, Singapore. India. Saikat Datta Felix Padel Observer Research Foundation, New Independent Researcher, India. Delhi, India. Gopalan Ravindran S. Srinivasan Department of Journalism and All India Drug Action Network, Baroda, Communication, University of Madras, India. Chennai, India. Shiv Visvanathan Lajwanti Chatani Sociologist, Noida, India. Department of Political Science, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Baroda, Sundar Sarukkai India. Professor of Philosophy, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, India. Lalitha Narayan Gujarat Institute of Development V.S. Elizabeth Research, Ahmedabad, India. Centre for Child and the Law, National Law School of India University, Laura Dudley Jenkins Bengaluru, India. Department of Political Science, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, USA Vivek Patkar Independent Researcher, Mumbai, India. Manoj Kumar Sinha Vivek Srinivasan Indian Law Institute, New Delhi, India Visiting Scholar, Stanford University, Stanford, USA. 3 3 4 Editorial Is the Welfare State in Crisis? Kannamma Raman he welfare state has been perceived as being in crisis for more than three decades. Of late, the future of the welfare state itself is the subject of debate. TThe reasons for such a prognosis is based on factors ranging from democratic overload, economic slowdown, fiscal crisis, and the ascendancy of neo-liberalism. It is argued that demographic and social changes, in particular the ageing society and the resultant ‘pension time bomb’, is leading to demands that make welfare states fiscally unsustainable. Some believe that the crisis the welfare state is undergoing is above all moral in nature; by assuming a universal right to welfare it replaces old virtue of self- reliance, by a ‘culture of dependency’. All this suggest that time is ripe for a reappraisal of the functioning of the welfare state. Given that the expression is a political slogan as well as an analytical concept both aspects need to examined. The concept of a welfare state drew its ideological basis from economists like Ernst Wiggfors, Gustav Möller and John Meynard Keynes. Gustav Möller, used the term ‘welfare state’ for the first time in the Swedish Social Democratic Party’s election manifesto in 1928. Keynes in his influential work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, pioneered the theory of full employment and advocated an activist economic policy by government. The welfare state system was established early in Scandinavia as a response to the great depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s. During this period Sweden built an advanced cradle-to-grave welfare state system around Per Albin Hansson’s concept of Folkhemmet (People’s home) (Kurian, 2005, p. 151). In this sense they pioneered the idea of universalisation of welfare. However, the welfare state, as we understand it today, is a product of the period immediately following the end of the Second World War. In the Anglo-Saxon world, it is generally identified with the recommendations of Sir William Beveridge’s celebrated Report on Social Insurance that identified “five giant evils” as obstacles to social progress – want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. However, the motives and models underlying ‘the’ welfare state varied. As Goodin (2003) notes: Bismarck’s conservative corporatist version built on frankly neo-feudal foundations to buy social peace. Alva and Gunnar Myrdal’s social democratic model aimed to generate more Swedish babies .... The British welfare state was principally the product of two renegade Liberals, Lloyd 5 Journal of Public Affairs and Change, ISSN (Online) 2456-9240, Volume I/Issue No. 2, Summer 2018 George and Beveridge ... The American welfare state was a patrician Democrat’s noblesse oblige response to the Great Depression, relieving distress among the old and disabled, the widowed and the chronically ill. (p.202) This does not mean that rulers or states in the past did not seek to protect the weaker sections of the society. C. B. Macpherson notes that pre-modern notions of ‘fair prices’, ‘fair wages’ and ‘just distribution’ promoted due to the external sanction of church or State approved the need to subjugate economic relations to social and political ends. Similarly, welfare based on the mediaeval idea of a ‘Christian duty to charity’ sought to protect the marginalised but it was “quite different to the maximizing individualism of the advocates of liberal capitalism” (Pierson, 2004, p.48). Something similar is highlighted by Gopalan, in his article in this issue. He examines how the notion of benevolence, a principle of righteousness, was a cornerstone of public governance in ancient Thamizagam (roughly translated as the homeland of the Tamils) during the Sangam age (spanning from 400 BCE to 300 CE). He therefore contends that one will be missing the true linkages, if one “roots only for ephemeral, a cultural understanding of the contemporary and previous versions of welfare politics in Tamil Nadu as purely populist and vote bank politics driven.” Subsequently, even states depicted as performing a ‘night-watchman’s role implemented of a wide range of measures to regulate factory work, the quality of housing, securing of public health, provision of public education, the municipalisation of basic services and compulsory workers’ compensation following industrial accidents. Most countries legislated some form of poor law, under which specified (generally local) public authorities were charged with the responsibility for raising and disbursing limited funds for the relief of destitution. Other states, “with a more paternalistic and activist state tradition saw still more and more intrusive public regulation of welfare” (Pierson, 2004, p. 49). However, the prime concern of these earlier states was the maintenance of public order, punishment of vagrancy and management of labour market, rather than the well-being of the poor. The benefits were ‘doled’ out rather grudgingly. This can be seen, for instance, in the arguments made by A. V. Dicey, the noted British lawyer, that it is inappropriate that fathers of children fed by the state should retain the right of voting for members of parliament (Briggs, 1961, p. 225). What differentiates the post Second World War development is the universalisation of welfare benefits and creation of entitlements. The roots of welfare state are premised around three sets of criteria, namely, introduction of social insurance, extension of citizenship and the depauperisation of public welfare, and growth of social expenditure (Pierson, 2004, pp. 50-51). The disassociation of “welfare” from poor law stigmas reinforced what came to be called ‘social citizenship’ (Marshall, 1950). Further, unlike the very modest efforts in the past, modern states have a massive bureaucracy and huge budget to ensure social welfare. The welfare state, as it was initially conceived, sought to secure an income to those excluded from the paid workforce, whether by reason of age (hence old-age pensions), Is the Welfare State in Crisis? / Kannamma

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