India’s Precocious Welfare State

In India today, so many political debates are focused on welfare and welfarism. It seems that state after state is competing to offer the most electorally attractive benefits to its voters. The central government, for its part, has pioneered a new model of social welfare built around digital ID and direct cash transfers to needy households.

Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy is a new book by the scholar Louise Tillin. It examines the development of India’s welfare state over the last century from the early decades of the twentieth century to the present. In so doing, it recovers a history previously relegated to the margins of scholarship on the political economy of development.

Louise is a Professor of Politics in the King’s India Institute at King’s College London. She is one of the world’s leading experts on Indian federalism, subnational comparative politics, and social policy. She is the author or editor of several previous books, including Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins.

Louise joins Milan on the show this week to discuss India’s “precocious” welfare regime, the late colonial debates over social insurance in India, and the pros and cons of the Nehruvian development model. Plus, the two discuss inter-state variation in modes of social protection and the current debate over welfare in India circa 2025.

Episode notes:

1. “Understanding the Delhi Education Experiment (with Yamini Aiyar),” Grand Tamasha, January 22, 2025.

2. Louise Tillin, “This is the moment for a new federal compact,” Indian Express, June 16, 2024.

3. Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, “Interview: How has Indian federalism evolved under the BJP?” Scroll.in, April 13, 2024.

4. Louise Tillin and Sandhya Venkateswaran, “Democracy and Health in India| Is Health an Electoral Priority?” (New Delhi: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 2023)