What cost growth? The effect of economic reform on India’s poor

Macroeconomic crisis led to India’s initiation of wide ranging economic reforms in 1991. To what extent have these reforms, aimed at accelerating economic growth, adversely affected the poor? Have they increased poverty and inequality? An Institute of Development Studies working paper looks at poverty levels before and after the reform programme. Whilst rural and urban poverty levels declined overall pre- reform, this decline slowed down or reversed post-reform. What poverty reducing measures would succeed in the context of India’s economic reform programme?

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What cost growth? The effect of economic reform on India’s poor