Articles by Himanshu

The last budget of the Modi government comes against the backdrop of severe agrarian and rural distress. It is also the last opportunity to undo the damage caused to the rural economy by this government in the last four years. While the government has finally acknowledged the gravity of the situation, its response has been limited to empty rhetoric without any financial commitment. Going by the past record of the government, it is clear that it is serious neither in its commitment nor in its intent. The half-hearted measures are not only too little and too late, it is also clear that this budget is unlikely to revive the rural economy.

Budget 2016-17 recognises that the rural economy is in crisis; however, it fails to address this with sufficient targeted rural spending. A perusal of budget documents reveals exaggerated expenditure claims, achieved through reclassification of budget heads. There has been an enduring neglect of agriculture, which is further exacerbated by this year's reduced subsidies for fertiliser and food. This will induce further vulnerabilities in the rural economy.

The performance of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Rajasthan was debated for its stupendous performance in the initial years of the scheme, but also for the relative sharp decline after 2010. Based on a large representative primary survey, this paper argues that the decline in performance of this scheme in Rajasthan is not entirely due to the lack of demand. Instead, the supply-driven top-down nature of the programme has led to a "discouraged worker" syndrome with workers showing disinterest in demanding work and passively waiting for availability of NREGS work. Strengthening the demand-based nature of the NREGS may reduce the need for rationing. Simple temporal tracking of NREGS outcomes at the village level along with proper recording of demand through the Management Information System may well help detect discrimination within panchayats.

This paper, in two parts, reports an evaluation of existing in-kind food transfers. Part I outlines the dimensions involved, in terms of reach, transfer content and physical leakages, and deals with the impact of these transfers on poverty as officially measured. Part II reports the impact of these transfers on calorie intakes and also discusses some issues regarding the financial cost of these transfers. Contrary to the view that food self-sufficiency and income growth have reduced the need for direct food interventions, the paper reports a significant increase in contribution of in-kind transfers to both poverty reduction and nutrition. Moreover, much of this increased impact is attributable to improved public distribution system efficiency. The first part, presented here, was motivated by some issues that arose in the context of the Tendulkar method of estimating poverty as regards its treatment of food prices. This method treats food prices differently from the earlier Lakdawala method and is sensitive to treatment of in-kind food transfers. The paper suggests a decomposition method that modifies the Tendulkar poverty lines and distinguishes between household out-of-pocket expenditures and transfers received from the PDS and mid-day meals. The poverty reducing impact of these food transfers is found to have increased over time and is more pronounced in the case of distribution-sensitive measures of poverty.

This paper re-examines the trends in employment and unemployment as thrown up by successive National Sample Surveys from the mid-1970s. The analysis suggests that the euphoria about high employment growth during 1999-2004 was not justified nor does the concern about jobless growth in the subsequent years capture the changes in employment structure. A long-term analysis of employment trends reveals that changes in the employment pattern and workforce structure have been sluggish and do not conform to the standard employment-output relationship. The analysis also flags certain issues which have a bearing on the comparability of employment data before and after 1993-94. Large fluctuations seen after 1993-94 appear to be a result of the movement in and out of labour force of a substantial section of the population which is vulnerable and in the informal sector in a phase of rising overall rates of economic growth. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the results of the recently released 2009-10 survey.