IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/fpr/ifpric/178088.html

Social safety nets for a nutrition-sensitive food system in South Asia: Lessons from India

Author

Listed:
  • Rahman, Andaleeb

Abstract

Social protection programs in South Asia are essential for addressing poverty, undernutrition, and food insecurity but are constrained by limited coverage and weak implementation capacity. • India’s expansive welfare architecture — spanning food, nutrition, health, and livelihoods — and its political economy (genesis, design, and effectiveness) offer critical lessons for the region. • Maternal and child-related social protection must prioritize the nutritional content of food over calorie sufficiency. • Digital tools, critical to improving welfare delivery, must avoid the risk of exclusion through decentralization and stronger bureaucratic accountability. • Social protection must be framed as part of an economic security “system” and not treated as stand-alone schemes.

Suggested Citation

  • Rahman, Andaleeb, 2025. "Social safety nets for a nutrition-sensitive food system in South Asia: Lessons from India," IFPRI book chapters,, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    • Handle: RePEc:fpr:ifpric:178088
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hdl.handle.net/10568/178088
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Natalie Carvalho & Slawa Rokicki, 2019. "The Impact of India’s Janani Suraksha Yojana Conditional Cash Transfer Programme: A Replication Study," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(5), pages 989-1006, May.
    2. Akhter Ahmed & John Hoddinott & Shalini Roy, 2025. "Food Transfers, Cash Transfers, Behavior Change Communication and Child Nutrition: Evidence from Bangladesh," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 39(2), pages 439-472.
    3. Bose, Nayana, 2017. "Raising Consumption Through India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 245-263.
    4. Gaurav Dhamija & Gitanjali Sen, 2021. "Lasting Impact of Early Life Interventions: Evidence from India’s Integrated Child Development Services," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(1), pages 106-138, January.
    5. John Hoddinott & Susanna Sandström & Joanna Upton, 2018. "The Impact of Cash and Food Transfers: Evidence from a Randomized Intervention in Niger," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1032-1049.
    6. Alejandro J. Ganimian & Karthik Muralidharan & Christopher R. Walters, 2024. "Augmenting State Capacity for Child Development: Experimental Evidence from India," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 132(5), pages 1565-1602.
    7. Warda Javed & Zubia Mumtaz, 2024. "South Asia’s unprotected poor: A systematic review of why social protection programs fail to reach their potential," PLOS Global Public Health, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(6), pages 1-22, June.
    8. Arindam Nandi & Jere R. Behrman & Ramanan Laxminarayan, 2020. "The Impact of a National Early Childhood Development Program on Future Schooling Attainment: Evidence from Integrated Child Development Services in India," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 69(1), pages 291-316.
    9. Pascaline Dupas & Radhika Jain, 2024. "Women Left Behind: Gender Disparities in Utilization of Government Health Insurance in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(10), pages 3345-3385, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nandi, Arindam & Sahoo, Soham & Haberland, Nicole & Ngô, Thoại D., 2023. "A glass ceiling at the playhouse? Gender gaps in public and private preschool enrollment in India," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    2. Harris-Fry, Helen & Saville, Naomi M. & Paudel, Puskar & Manandhar, Dharma S. & Cortina-Borja, Mario & Skordis, Jolene, 2022. "Relative power: Explaining the effects of food and cash transfers on allocative behaviour in rural Nepalese households," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    3. Premand, Patrick & Barry, Oumar, 2022. "Behavioral change promotion, cash transfers and early childhood development: Experimental evidence from a government program in a low-income setting," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    4. Chatterjee, Somdeep & Poddar, Prashant, 2019. "Maternal Health, Children Education and Women Empowerment: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from India," GLO Discussion Paper Series 332, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    5. Mariapia Mendola & Mengesha Yayo Negasi, 2019. "Nutritional and Schooling Impact of a Cash Transfer Program in Ethiopia: A Retrospective Analysis of Childhood Experience," Development Working Papers 451, Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano.
    6. Lara Cockx & Nathalie Francken, 2016. "Evolution and impact of EU aid for food and nutrition security: a review," Working Papers of LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance 572519, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance.
    7. Ignaciuk, Ada & Malevolti, Giulia & Scognamillo, Antonio & Sitko, Nicholas J., "undated". "Can food aid relax farmers’ constraints to adopting climate-adaptive agricultural practices? Evidence from Ethiopia, Malawi and the United Republic of Tanzania," ESA Working Papers 324073, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA).
    8. Özler, Berk & Çelik, Çiğdem & Cunningham, Scott & Cuevas, P. Facundo & Parisotto, Luca, 2021. "Children on the move: Progressive redistribution of humanitarian cash transfers among refugees," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    9. Sudha Narayanan & Nicolas Gerber, 2015. "Social safety nets for food and nutritional security in India," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2015-031, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    10. Dennis Puorideme, 2023. "An Ethnographic-Discourse Analysis of the Socio-political Effects of Interaction Between Cash Transfer Programme Authorities, Caregivers and Non-beneficiaries," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 35(3), pages 483-519, June.
    11. Ferrière, Nathalie & Suwa-Eisenmann, Akiko, 2015. "Does Food Aid Disrupt Local Food Market? Evidence from Rural Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 114-131.
    12. Kartik Misra, 2019. "No Employment without Participation : An Evaluation of India's Employment Program in Eastern Uttar Pradesh," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2019-13, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    13. Bhattacharya, Titir & Chakraborty, Tanika & Mukherjee, Anirban, 2024. "Demand for Health Insurance: Financial and Informational role of Informal Networks," SocArXiv 2mq5v, Center for Open Science.
    14. repec:sus:susewp:1324 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Nandi, Arindam & Haberland, Nicole & Ngo, Thoai D., 2023. "The impact of primary schooling expansion on adult educational attainment, literacy, and health: Evidence from India’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    16. Anaka Aiyar & Naveen Sunder, 2024. "Health insurance and child mortality: Evidence from India," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(5), pages 870-893, May.
    17. Claire MacPherson & Olivier Sterck, 2019. "Humanitarian vs. Development Aid for Refugees: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," CSAE Working Paper Series 2019-15, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    18. World Bank Group, 2016. "Cash Transfers in Humanitarian Contexts," World Bank Publications - Reports 24699, The World Bank Group.
    19. Barrera,Oscar & Macours,Karen & Premand,Patrick & Vakis,Renos, 2020. "Texting Parents about Early Child Development : Behavioral Changes and Unintended Social Effects," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9492, The World Bank.
    20. Agarwal, Sandip K. & Mishra, Shubham, 2024. "Health impact evaluation of Aspirational Districts Program in India: Evidence from National Family Health Survey," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    21. Quisumbing, Agnes R. & Ahmed, Akhter & Gilligan, Daniel O. & Hoddinott, John & Kumar, Neha & Leroy, Jef L. & Menon, Purnima & Olney, Deanna K. & Roy, Shalini & Ruel, Marie, 2020. "Randomized controlled trials of multi-sectoral programs: Lessons from development research," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fpr:ifpric:178088. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifprius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.