Articles by Anirudh Krishna

The need for the public distribution system varies widely across states and districts. In some districts, the poor draw more than 80% of their grain from thePDS, but in other districts this share is less than 10%. A wide diversity of relationships with the PDS exist, suggesting a need for alternative modes of provisioning. A variable geometry of food provisioning might emerge, with cash working better for the needs of some districts and grain supply continuing to work better in other districts. Only a well-designed empirical test of the alternative modes will help ascertain the preferred shape of the PDS for a particular state or district.

The means of personal transportation to which one has access constitute an important part of one's relationship with globalisation, limiting or enhancing the scope of activity and area of influence. We define economic classes in relation to different transportation assets, considering as the lower middle class those who have motorcycles or motor-scooters, and as the upper middle class, those who own automobiles. Unambiguously identifying a middle class is difficult; the term is relational, context-dependent, and inchoate. However, the lower- and upper-middle classes, defined in this manner, are robust to alternative definitions: these groups have substantially higher incomes than groups below, own disproportionately large shares of other physical assets, and do much better in terms of education, health, media exposure, and social capital. The middle class increased from 11% in 1992 to almost double this percentage in the early years of the new millennium. Subsequently, its growth has slowed down, coming almost to a halt in rural areas. Fragility and volatility are in evidence; many, formerly in the middle class, have fallen back. It cannot be blithely assumed that India's middle class will grow much larger.

The distribution of benefits from economic growth since the early 1990s has followed an identifiable spatial pattern. People in the largest cities have achieved the greatest gains, followed by people in small towns and villages close to towns. Further away, in villages located more than five kilometres from the nearest town - home to more than half of the entire population of India - inflation-adjusted per capita incomes fell between 1993 and 2005. The steepest declines were experienced by the lowest income groups. Rising inequality is a natural result of these spatially distributed trends. The debilitating effects of "distance from town" need to be countered by connecting outlying villages with more and better physical and social infrastructures.

Rather than place of origin (rural vs urban) or economic background, two educated parents most commonly characterise newly recruited software professionals in Bangalore. A survey of three software firms showed that fathers of all new recruits have at least a high school degree; 75 per cent are college graduates. More than 80 per cent of all mothers also have a high school education or better. Having two educated parents is a significant asset in a situation of information scarcity; however, no more than 4-7 per cent of all Indians have parents who are similarly qualified. Restricting better-paying jobs to this tiny segment of the national talent pool severely shrinks the prospects for national growth and individual achievement. How information gaps can be resolved through better institutional means needs to be publicly debated.

Different reasons account for households escaping from poverty and those falling into poverty. Different policies and programmes will be required to deal with each of these two separate trends and both will be needed simultaneously in all villages. The most effective public policies to apply in any region are best identified through careful micro-level analyses. A methodology to assist with this kind of inquiry was developed initially for investigations in southern Rajasthan and was modified in northern Gujarat. This paper reports the results of investigations using the improved methodology in 36 villages of Andhra Pradesh.