ABSTRACT
This chapter operates within the realm of explanatory social policy research, identifying the reasons for a heavy increase in welfare state system finance and spending in the last two decades in India. Following the actor-based school (also called the conflict school) in explanatory welfare state theory, the author traces back the sudden and sustained increase in welfare state financing and spending to increased party competition in democratic elections that started at the dawn of the 1990s and has lasted ever since. The rapid decline of the Indian Congress Party over the last couple of decades and the repeated rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party, as well as the rise of regional parties and their influence in the 1990s, have changed the political and public policy landscape in India—irreversibly, it seems.
