Alleviating poverty: role of good governance and constitutional reform
- 2000
- p.3739-742
- Oct
The persistence of poverty in independent India has been the subject of extensive research and intensive debate. Yet absolute poverty is a state of being for more than one-third of India's population at the turn of the century. Issues relating to the review of the Constitution have been at the centre of controversy in recent times. Issues relating to the reform of government itself have been largely ignored. The intersection of the three themes remains unexplored. Can an improvement in governance brought about by constitutional reform assist in the task of poverty alleviation, a task on which successive governments have failed to deliver for the last 53 years? The paper addresses this question and suggests that the answer is in the affirmative. - Reproduced