Development and Welfare Policy in South Asia

Deepta Chopra is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, UK. She focuses on policy processes, and has extensive experience in managing, designing, and understanding social protection and livelihoods programmes. Her work has primarily been on examining policy processes through the formation of a landmark legislation, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), India. Her expertise on state-society interactions has allowed her to engage with issues of power and participation and examine efforts to address poverty and vulnerability from the unique perspective of policy. Her current research interests include a focus on gendered political economy analysis of policies on unpaid care work; the design, implementation, and monitoring of rights-based policies (specifically public works); and policy diffusion of social protection policies across South Asia.Gabriele Koehler is a macroeconomist trained at the universities of Munich, Tübingen, Regensburg, and Ottawa. She worked in senior positions as a development economist with the United Nations at ESCAP, UNCTAD, UNDP, and UNICEF, and has been a visiting fellow with the Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction Team at the Institute of Development Studies, UK. She serves on several advisory boards in the field of international development, and is currently based in Munich as a policy advisor, researcher, and publicist. Her research interests include the development agenda beyond 2015; human rights; employment and decent work; social protection; industrial, trade, and investment policy; and social and economic policy in South and Southeast Asia.

"The book is filling a knowledge gap which is of pivotal interest for policy makers and analysts of welfare state policy and patterns of social and economic development. On the whole this is fascinating reading for all those who still believe in the welfares state and perhaps a source of second thought for those who do not." – Michael Cichon, President of the International Council on Social Welfare"[T]his book offers a lucid, comprehensive and judicious account of the development and welfare activities in the South Asian region. It traces policies in the area of education, health, and social security. It features the intentions of policy makers, discerns the design and blueprints of welfare policies and tracks the process and politics of change. That combination of approaches makes it an essential read for the scholars and policymakers striving to understand development and welfare policy and their patterns in South Asia." – Rajeev Ranjan Chaturvedy, Institute of South Asian Studies, NUS, Singapore

• Preface, Naila Kabeer PART I 1. Introduction: Development and welfare policy in South Asia, Gabriele Koehler and Deepta Chopra 2. Some preliminary reflections on development, public policy, and welfare states, Gabriele Koehler 3. Approaching developmental welfare states: A "welfare geography" of South Asia, Gabriele Koehler 4. Fiscal space in South Asia: Evidence for the welfare state, Aniruddha Bonnerjee PART 2 5. Development, welfare, and governance: Explaining Bangladesh’s "development surprise", Wahiduddin Mahmud and Simeen Mahmud 6. The Indian case: Towards a rights-based welfare state?, Deepta Chopra 7. The Maldives: The shifting nature of a welfare state, Aniruddha Bonnerjee 8. Nepal: Social policy in a nascent welfare state, Yuba Raj Khatiwada and Gabriele Koehler 9. Political economy of reform: Social protection reform in Pakistan, Haris Gazdar 10. Sri Lanka’s experience of social development: Towards equity and justice, Laksiri Jayasuriya PART 3 11. Social sector spending in South Asia: A mixed bag, Aniruddha Bonnerjee 12. Welfare, development, rights in South Asia, Deepta Chopra, Outlook: The logic of Southasian evolution, Kanak Mani Dixit