Book Launch | ‘Making India Work’ by Prof. Louise Tillin | V.R. Krishna Iyer Chair on Public Law & Policy Choice, NLSIU & BIC

The V.R. Krishna Iyer Chair at NLSIU, in collaboration with the Bangalore International Centre, is hosting the launch of ‘Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy’ (Cambridge University Press, 2025), by Prof. Louise Tillin, Professor of Politics & Former Director, King’s India Institute, King’s College London. The discussion on ‘The History of Welfare: State, Market and Livelihoods in India’ will be followed by Q&A with the audience.

Panelists:

Dr. Anindita Adhikari, Assistant Professor of Social Science, NLSIU, Bengaluru

Rajendran Narayanan, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru

Moderator:

Prof. (Dr.) Arun Thiruvengadam, Professor of Law, NLSIU, Bengaluru.

About the Event

Non-NLS community: The event is open to the public. To RSVP and know more about the event, click here.

NLS community: A bus will be arranged to depart from campus at 4:15 pm. A Google Form will be made available for sign-ups shortly.

About the book

Welfare guarantees and direct benefit transfers are at the heart of the political marketplace but the longer-term history of welfare in India is surprisingly little known. ‘Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy’ (Cambridge University Press, 2025) recovers a history that is crucial for understanding the current juncture of welfare politics and political economy in India. Traversing more than a century of welfare development from the late colonial period to the present-day, the book asks why India has ended up with a small protected formal sector workforce shielded by social security and protection against retrenchment, and a much larger population that labours informally and does not enjoy such protections. It examines why India’s model of industrialisation failed to provide an engine for mass employment or welfare state development, and why the focus of policy efforts has shifted over the last fifty years from employment generation to the rise of ‘direct benefits’ which subsidise precarious livelihoods. (Source: BIC)

About the author

Louise Tillin is Professor of Politics and Former Director of King’s India Institute, King’s College London. She is the author of numerous books including ‘Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy’ (Cambridge University Press, 2025); ‘The Politics of Poverty Reduction in India: The UPA Government from 2004 to 2014’ (Orient Blackswan, 2020) co-authored with James Chiriyankandath, Diego Maiorano and James Manor; ‘Indian Federalism’ (Oxford University Press, 2019), ‘Politics of Welfare: Comparisons across States’ (Oxford University Press, 2015), co-edited with Rajeshwari Deshpande and KK Kailash; ‘Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins’ (Hurst & Co/Oxford University Press, 2013) and has published in many academic journals.

Since 2013, she has been the co-organiser of a series of conferences on India’s Political Economy, most recently in conjunction with the New Political Economy Initiative at IIT Bombay. She holds degrees from the University of Cambridge, University of Pennsylvania and Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. (Source: BIC)