ABSTRACT
Introduction While poverty and inequality have long been central to discussions about the Indian economy, they have received special attention by policy makers and researchers in recent years. There are two related reasons for the heightened interest in poverty and inequality. First, the Indian economy has been among the faster growing economies in the developing world since the 1980s. The efficacy of economic growth on poverty reduction in a country with widespread poverty is quite naturally a subject of considerable interest. Second, while market-oriented economic reforms, initiated in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s, are widely believed to lie behind high growth, there is considerable concern that the main beneficiaries of these reforms have been those at the higher end of the income distribution. In other words, there is concern that while India’s economy is growing faster than it used to, lower income groups – and especially the poor – have not significantly participated in or benefited from growth.
