The Politics of Welfare and Governance in India - Clients and Constituents: Political Responsiveness in Patronage Democracies and Social Justice through Inclusion: The Consequences of Electoral Quotas in India and Claiming the State: Active Citizenship and Social Welfare in Rural India and How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India

If we imagine welfare and governance occurring along a continuum, the state represents the supply side, with specific roles and responsibilities. Citizens are at the other end of this continuum representing the demand side, with a set of claims and expectations from the state. This defines state-citizenship linkages in terms of “who gets what, when, and how” (a classic postulation by H. D. Lasswell,¹ still relevant today) and what T. H. Marshall describes as “social citizenship.”² To be sure, in both scale and reach, the state's public policy programs have expanded in manifold ways. How does this two-way continuum (represented by the state and citizens) operate in a diverse, multiethnic postcolonial democracy such as India? Distribution of goods and services in India is uneven and patchy, with considerable variation across regions and social groups. Even when goods and services are distributed, it is along caste or ethnic lines...