Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for the research fellowship that made it possible for me to spend the dedicated time necessary to lay the foundations of this book. The Leverhulme Trust are an exemplary funder who place their long-term trust in scholars to deliver research that moves beyond narrow siloes and disciplinary boundaries. This book, which straddles history and the social sciences and covers a large historical canvas, is a classic Leverhulme Trust project that has taken time to mature.

I owe a substantial debt to three superb research assistants: Nilanjana Sen, Leeda Philip, and Shiva Chakrabarti. Their support, creativity, and often dogged ingenuity in navigating archives in India (Nilanjana and Leeda) and at the World Bank in the US (Shiva) were invaluable. While I spent a considerable amount of time exploring archival collections, from the Maharashtra State Archives to Teen Murti to the British Library, the depth of archival endeavours for this book would not have been possible without the support of these brilliant researchers. My research for the book also benefited from the project to digitise the International Labour Organization’s India Office monthly reports led by the Centre for Modern Indian Studies at the University of Göttingen.

For formative conversations in the early stages of thinking about this book, I would particularly like to thank Barbara Harriss-White (especially for prompting me to engage with S. Guhan’s contributions to social policy and for organising a round table at Wolfson College, Oxford, to discuss the fledgling book project in 2019), John Harriss, Niraja Gopal Jayal, and Jon Wilson. I have had the opportunity to present sections of the book in many places, although the flow of such occasions was inevitably interrupted by the pandemic. I am grateful for discussions about different elements of the book at the following: British Association of South Asian Studies conference (2017), Oxford University’s South Asia day workshop (2017), Harvard University’s workshop Food in the Global Welfare State (2018), an Oxford University Department of Social Policy seminar (2019), Jindal Global University (2019), Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research conference on India’s political economy (2019, with special thanks to Manny Teitelbaum for commenting on an early draft of Chapter 3 at that conference), Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh (2019), Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad (online, 2021), and Asia Research Institute, University of Nottingham (2023). I was also honoured to deliver the Professor V. N. Sirsikar Memorial Lecture organised by Savitribai Phule University of Pune in February 2023 on Bombay, Maharashtra and the Making of Welfare Policies in India.

I have benefited hugely from conversations about welfare policies and politics in India over the years with many friends, colleagues, and students. My insights into welfare politics since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) era have been honed through several collaborative projects. Firstly, with Rajeshwari Deshpande, K. K. Kailash, and other contributors within the Lokniti network to Politics of Welfare: Comparisons across Indian States (Oxford University Press, 2015), and ongoing conversations within that group about elections and welfare. Secondly, with James Chiriyankandath, Diego Maiorano, and James Manor as co-authors of The Politics of Poverty Reduction in India: The UPA Government, 2004 to 2014 (Orient Blackswan, 2020). I have conducted interviews for these projects in different parts of India. I am grateful to all those who have taken the time to speak with me. I would also like to thank Yamini Aiyar and Reetika Khera for many conversations on related themes over the years, and two anonymous reviewers for Cambridge University Press for their extremely generous engagement and suggestions for improving the manuscript. My thanks, too, to King’s College London for the periods of research leave that have been essential for this book to see the light of day.

Lastly, for their love, laughter, and distractions, thanks as always to my wonderful family, to whom this book is dedicated.