Building Responsible Social Protection in South Asia

Abstract

Inspired by the global ambition to eradicate poverty through the Millennium Development Goals, to be achieved by 2015, this article finds that continuing population growth in South Asia will make such goals impossible to achieve. Rather than sinking into despair, however, the article first captures specifically the major demographic reasons behind the troubling bottlenecks of development in South Asia. Since tackling those demographic issues will not yield tangible results in the short run, the focus of analysis then switches to arguing that other creative development remedies are indeed feasible. Given that there is no scarcity of food in South Asia, but it simply does not reach those who need it most, the article demonstrates that India’s recent Food Security Act of 2013 may be a globally relevant model of concerted state action to tackle deep poverty and avoid mass starvation. This article breaks new ground in relation to implementing state-led social welfare measures, showing that earlier assessments about Asian development may have been too pessimistic.