• Jilly Sarkar

The paper is an attempt towards understanding the notion of ‘welfare’ which existed at the time of independence and whether there has been any shift in this understanding, post liberalisation. With an implicit belief that the Indian state is very much a welfare state even after the neoliberal swing, the paper argues that the idea of ‘welfare’ has indeed undergone a change in contemporary times. While the notion of welfare in the pre-liberalisation era differed from the western concept of welfare, the post-liberal state’s idea is closer to it as the notion of right has entered the discourse of welfare in India. This implies there would not be any ‘patron-client’ relationship between the state and its poor, where the latter is always at the behest of the former for its generosity. Welfare, no longer is about charity today. The paper seeks to draw attention on the trajectory of liberal state, its notion of welfare as evident in the welfare policies, especially the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005.

Welfare, Liberalism, Neoliberal, MGNREGA, Policy

"Public Policy And The Indian State: Mapping The Notion Of Welfare", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.5, Issue 12, page no.84-92, December-2018, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1812514.pdf

"Public Policy And The Indian State: Mapping The Notion Of Welfare", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.5, Issue 12, page no. pp84-92, December-2018, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1812514.pdf