May 14 2025 to May 14 2025 6:30 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Welfare guarantees and direct benefit transfers are at the heart of the political marketplace but the longer-term history of welfare in India is surprisingly little known. Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2025) recovers a history that is crucial for understanding the current juncture of welfare politics and political economy in India. Traversing more than a century of welfare development from the late colonial period to the present-day, the book asks why India has ended up with a small protected formal sector workforce shielded by social security and protection against retrenchment, and a much larger population that labours informally and does not enjoy such protections. It examines why India’s model of industrialisation failed to provide an engine for mass employment or welfare state development, and why the focus of policy efforts has shifted over the last fifty years from employment generation to the rise of ‘direct benefits’ which subsidise precarious livelihoods.

In this session, Louise Tillin, the author of the book, Anindita Adhikari and Rajendran Narayanan will be in conversation with Arun Thiruvengadam. The discussion will be followed by Q&A with the audience.

In collaboration with:

This event is sponsored by the Justice VR Krishna Iyer Chair, NLS. 

Speakers

Louise Tillin
Professor of Politics & Former Director, King’s India Institute, King’s College London
Louise Tillin is Professor of Politics and Former Director of King’s India Institute, King’s College London. She is the author of numerous books including Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2025); The Politics of Poverty Reduction in India: The UPA Government from 2004 to 2014 (Orient Blackswan, 2020) co-authored with James Chiriyankandath, Diego Maiorano and James Manor; Indian Federalism (Oxford University Press, 2019), Politics of Welfare: Comparisons across States (Oxford University Press, 2015), co-edited with Rajeshwari Deshpande and KK Kailash; Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins (Hurst & Co/Oxford University Press, 2013) and has published in many academic journals.

Since 2013, she has been the co-organiser of a series of conferences on India’s Political Economy, most recently in conjunction with the New Political Economy Initiative at IIT Bombay. She holds degrees from the University of Cambridge, University of Pennsylvania and Institute of Development Studies, Sussex.

Anindita Adhikari
Assistant Professor of Social Science, NLSIU, Bangalore
Anindita Adhikari is an Assistant Professor of Social Science at the National Law School of India University (NLS), Bangalore. She is a political sociologist with a PhD from Brown University and previous degrees from Delhi University and the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. Her research interests lie at the intersection of social movements, bureaucracies, the politics of welfare provisioning and democratic deepening. Her research and teaching is motivated and informed by fifteen years of public action work with rights-based campaigns and government on expanding access to social rights. She co-founded the organization ‘Social Accountability Forum for Action and Research’ (SAFAR) that works on strengthening transparency and accountability in public service delivery in collaboration with state and national governments and civil society.

Rajendran Narayanan
Associate Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru
Rajendran Narayanan is an Associate Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, where he anchors a curriculum titled ‘Data, Democracy & Development.’ He holds a Ph.D in Statistics from Cornell University, Ithaca and prior to Azim Premji University, he has held academic positions at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, Cornell University, Ithaca and Ashoka University, Sonepat. He is keen on building bridges between research and public engagement which led him to be a co-founder of an organisation called LibTech India which works with researchers, civil society organisations and governments across some states on improving transparency and accountability of rural social policies. He is also part of national campaigns such as those involved in the promotion of constitutional values, right to work and food, etc.

Arun Thiruvengadam
Professor of Law, NLSIU, Bangalore
Arun Thiruvengadam is a Professor of Law at the National Law School, Bangalore (“NLS”). He holds degrees in law from NLS and the New York University School of Law. He teaches and researches on Indian constitutional and regulatory law, comparative constitutional law, South Asian law and politics and welfare rights. He is the author of The Constitution of India: A Contextual Analysis (Bloomsbury UK/India, 2017), and has co-edited five other books. In 2025, he is scheduled to teach courses at the Faculty of Law, University of Zurich and the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law, Sydney.