ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with aspects of demography and health. It is concerned with a set of long-standing structural issues related to the Indian economy: a number of population-related phenomena, including the ‘demographic dividend’ wrought by a changing age structure, the greying of the population, distress-induced migration, undernutrition, and a declining sex ratio, and aspects of sanitation, disease, and public health related to the problem of open defecation. The book reviews the government’s record of the interests that have been served by its policy orientation and addresses certain perspectives on policy entertained by India’s elites and a specific aspect of economic policy that has acquired some salience in recent discussions of the economy: the notion of cash support in the form of an assured basic income.
