Define ‘social policy’. Evaluate the performance of social policy in modernisation of developing societies. (2001)
Defining social policy
Social policy is the body of principles and measures through which a state deliberately allocates welfare, regulates life chances and manages the social consequences of economic change. Richard Titmuss defined its field as the organised system of social services and the wider “social division of welfare”; T. H. Marshall placed it in the growth of social rights alongside civil and political rights. In developing societies its scope is wider still: social policy there is not a supplement to an achieved modernity but an instrument for manufacturing one — an arm of nation-building and directed modernisation.
What it was asked to do
Modernisation theory expected societies to move on their own from ascription to achievement and particularism to universalism. Newly independent states did not wait. India legislated the transition — abolition of intermediaries and ceilings on landholding, abolition of untouchability, reservation in education and public employment under Articles 15(4) and 16(4), planned industrialisation within a mixed economy, and universal elementary education.
The record — achievements
- Human development outcomes moved fastest where policy led. Life expectancy rose from 58.6 years in 1990 to 72 in 2023 and fertility reached replacement level — results of public health and education policy, not of income growth alone.
- Mass schooling produced a first-generation learner. The 2024 rural education survey shows Class 3 reading in government schools recovering to 23.4% and subtraction to 27.6%, above pre-pandemic levels, following a focused foundational literacy mission.
- Compensatory policy changed the composition of power. Christophe Jaffrelot (India’s Silent Revolution, 2003) documents how reservation and electoral competition produced a political and administrative class from subordinated castes — a structural change no market process would have delivered.
- Kerala demonstrates the decisive case: land reform, near-universal literacy and public health produced first-world social indicators at low per capita income, proving social policy can modernise a society ahead of its economy. East Asia reversed the sequence, with public housing, education and health underwriting industrial competitiveness.
The record — failures
- The soft state. Gunnar Myrdal (Asian Drama, 1968) argued that South Asian states legislate without enforcing, because rulers and the regulated share interests. Zamindari abolition and consolidation of holdings largely succeeded; land ceiling laws largely failed, defeated by benami transfers and the vested interest of large farmers. Policy redistributed titles, not land.
- Modernisation without redistribution. Concentration is now at a historic peak — the top 1% holds 40.1% of India’s wealth (Nitin Kumar Bharti, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Anmol Somanchi, 2024) — higher than under colonial rule.
- Tradition absorbed the policy. Yogendra Singh (Modernization of Indian Tradition, 1973) showed modern institutions being reinterpreted in traditional idiom; caste did not dissolve but reconstituted itself as political constituency and professional network, as Dipankar Gupta and Satish Deshpande argue.
- Uneven by gender and region. Female labour force participation stands at 40.0% against 79.1% for men, and the gap between Kerala and the northern plains has widened.
Conclusion
Social policy in developing societies has been far more effective at expanding capabilities than at redistributing assets and power. It has modernised life chances while leaving the structure that generates them substantially intact — which is why its unfinished agenda is not more schemes but enforceable rights over land, work and voice.