Articles by Sukhadeo Thorat

This study aims to understand the drivers that helped India achieve the challenging targets of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty before 2015. Have increased public investments or farm subsidies contributed to reducing rural poverty, directly through various public spending schemes or indirectly through increased agricultural land productivity? Utilising a structural equation to answer this question for the period 1981–82 to 2013–14, it was found that education and agricultural research and development produced the highest marginal returns for promoting agricultural income, while investments in rural infrastructure development and health provisions are the most effective in reducing rural poverty.

This study attempts to identify the forms of discrimination experienced by Dalits and Muslims in the rental housing market in five metropolitan areas of the National Capital Region of Delhi. A combination of three distinct methods, the telephonic audit, in-person or face-to-face audit, and studies, is used to capture the phenomenon of discrimination and unequal outcomes for prospective Dalit and Muslim tenants in the urban rental housing market. The study finds that houseowner prejudices deny housing for both Dalits and Muslims, with Muslims experiencing greater discrimination. The study also found that Dalits and Muslims who manage to get homes on rent have to do so by agreeing to unfair terms and conditions.

This paper examines the changes in poverty incidence and monthly per capita expenditure in India using the National Sample Survey's unit record data of three rounds, 1993-94, 2004-05 and 2009-10. The changes in poverty and growth in MPCE have been measured for major socio-religious and economic groups in both rural and urban sectors. This is complemented by the decomposition of the change in the incidence of poverty into the growth and distribution components. The results indicate that the poverty rate has declined at an accelerated rate during 2004-05 - 2009-10 for all socio-religious household groups. Growth has been more poverty reducing at an aggregate level during the period 2004-05 - 2009-10 as compared to 1993-94 - 2004-05. However, some groups benefited more than the others from poverty reduction. Inequality has also begun to adversely affect poverty reduction, particularly in the urban sector.

This article examines the prevalence of discrimination in the job application process of private sector enterprises in India. The study is based on a field experiment where authors replied to job advertisements in major English dailies sending three applications to each call - as an upper caste Hindu applicant, as a dalit and as a Muslim. Using statistical analysis they assess the data and find that discriminatory processes operate even at the first stage of the application process.

Growth in agricultural productivity, the rural non-farm sector and rural wages, which are the main sources of poverty reduction in both China and India, have been made possible by public investments in R&D, infrastructure (such as roads, power, irrigation, communication and education) and anti-poverty programmes. However, returns on these public investments, reckoned in terms of poverty reduction, vary drastically across different types of investment. The trade-off between agricultural growth and poverty reduction is generally small among different types of investments and between regions. Agricultural research, education, and infrastructure development have a significant growth impact as well as a large poverty reduction impact.