This handbook maps the major interventions of the Union government that together constitute India’s welfare regime. India’s welfare architecture affects the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people.  Understanding how these programmes were created, how they have functioned, and the extent to which they achieve their stated objectives is a matter of considerable economic, social, and political importance. This volume seeks to provide a systematic assessment of these interventions and their place within India’s broader development trajectory. The handbook brings together 18 chapters across the major welfare domains and a set of cross-cutting themes. In addition to the macroeconomics of welfare, the domains covered are: maternity entitlements, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), mid-day meals, the Public Distribution System (PDS), rural employment guarantee, social security pensions, school education, health, PM-JAY, the Right to Education Act, PM-KISAN, and state-level unconditional cash transfers. Chapters on social justice, social accountability, decentralisation and digitisation address the cross-cutting dimensions that shape delivery across the entire architecture.

Editors: Bhargav B S, Dipa Sinha, Rajendran Narayanan, Revati Mathai, Vijay Ram S

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In this paper, we examine the utility of second-stage stratification within the first-stage units (FSUs) of large-scale sample surveys, focusing on India’s official labour force surveys, namely the NSSO Employment-Unemployment Survey 2011-12, the Labour Bureau Employment-Unemployment Survey 2013 – 14, and the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2022 – 23. These three surveys stratify households within the FSU in different ways, and we examine the implications of these choices for the statistical precision of the resulting estimates. Using Monte Carlo simulations on FSUs constructed from PLFS 2022 – 23 unitlevel data, we estimate the variance of each design across three labour market outcomes: labour force participation rate (LFPR), unemployment rate (UR), and labour income. Our primary finding is that the household-level stratification designs employed in these surveys do not necessarily improve precision. For labour force participation and unemployment, simple random sampling outperforms stratification in most FSUs. In general, gains depend critically on the correlation between the stratification variable and the outcome of interest. We propose an alternative education-based scheme that combines lower secondary (10^th pass) and graduate attainment. This design raises the median efficiency gain over the PLFS by about 14% for unemployment and 17% for income. We conclude with some reflections on the factors that are relevant to the choice of stratification design.

*We thank Anmol Somanchi and Prof G.C. Manna for helpful discussions. Views are authors’ and do not necessarily represent those of their institutions

Authors: 

Pratyush Priyadarshi, Anand Shrivastava, & Amit Basole

पाठशाला भीतर और बाहर का जून अंक विद्यालय संस्कृति, डर किस तरह सीखना बाधित करता है और साथ मिलकर सीखना कैसे सीखने के आनंद को बढ़ा देता है जैसे मुद्दों पर केन्द्रित है। इसके अलावा बाल साहित्य या पढ़ने की घण्टी को भाषा की गतिविधि तक सीमित न रखकर उसका जुड़ाव तमाम विषयों को समझने और विद्यार्थियों के व्यक्तित्व निर्माण में कैसे देखा जा सकता है, पहली और दूसरी भाषा सीखने से जुड़ी मुश्किलों और उनसे निकलने के लिए कौन सी प्रक्रिया अपनाई गई इस बारे में भी लेख इस अंक में शामिल है। इसके अतिरिक्त हमेशा की तरह सभी स्थाई स्तम्भ भी अंक का हिस्सा हैं, जिनमें विभिन्न राज्यों से आई शिक्षक डायरी, ​‘किताबों से दोस्ती’ में कुछ ज़रूरी किताबों की बात, ​‘उम्मीद जगाते शिक्षक’ के अन्तर्गत पढ़ेंगे ऐसे शिक्षक की कहानी जिन्होंने पढ़ने-लिखने की गतिविधियों को कुछ इस तरह विद्यालय में किया कि विद्यार्थियों का पढ़ना-लिखना बेहतर हुआ। साथ ही हैं कुछ रोचक और उपयोगी गतिविधियाँ।