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About The Book:
Weakening Welfare is a powerful argument for expanding and strengthening the public distribution system (PDS) in a country where hunger, poverty and malnutrition are as endemic as in India.
The reigning orthodoxy of structural adjustment preaches that the public distribution system (PDS) be dismantled. This book is a shrap indictment of food policies of the liberalization era. It demonstrates how these policies will worsen food and nutrition security among the vast majority of the Indian people. Looking at the effects of targeting of food subsidies on other countries, it marshals arguments in favour of making PDS universal.
There is little doubt that PDS, as it functions today, has fallen by and large to provide nutritional support to the people and requires genuine reform. The exception is Kerala, the only state in India where PDS has been near universal. This book discusses alternative proposals for making PDS an effective measure of food security.
Written in a lucid, non-technical style, the book presents a wealth of recent data that will be as handy for the expert as for the interested layperson.
MADHURA SWAMINATHAN is Associate Professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai. She has worked extensively on issues of poverty, inequality and the standard of living. She has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas (Mexico City), and taught at the University of Oxford, the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki School of Economics. |
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Review:
"[Swaminathan's] contentions are well substantiated by history, facts, and figures which makes [the book] essential reading for economists, politicians, administrators-not to mention the new breed of 'know-all' economic journalists who are forever mouthing each other off in their devotion to laissezfaire and hostility to State intervention for the deprived."
Biblio
“a well written account of the context and practice of PDS in India and is rich in analysis. It is also daring in that it address the issue of food security head on in an environment of market-oriented policies and viewpoints and suggests better role for state.” Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics
“this book brings together a wealth of new data.”
Indian Review of Books
“It [book] poses a challenge not as much before the state. . .as before the media managers and other manufacturers of consent to rethink their positions.”
Deccan Herald
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