Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the discourse on poverty of India's ruling Congress Party, its rhetoric on the issue, and the impact of the policies it has pursued in government on the mass poverty that persists in the rapidly expanding Indian economy of the early 21st century.

Paper long abstract:

In the last two decades of market liberalisation the attitude of India's ruling Congress Party on the economy has changed dramatically in comparison to the socialist tone that dominated its language and practise in the previous forty years. The paper examines the party's discourse on poverty, its rhetoric on the issue, and the impact of the policies it has pursued in government on the mass poverty that persists in the rapidly expanding Indian economy of the early 21st century. It begins by tracing the place of poverty in the development of the socialist strand that came to dominate the post-independence Congress Party under Jawaharlal Nehru (under whom the party adopted the 1955 Avadi resolution committing itself to a socialist pattern of society) and Indira Gandhi (who made the phrase "garibi hatao", or "end poverty", the slogan of her triumphant 1971 general election campaign). This is followed by a consideration of the politics of the initially halting moves towards liberalising the economy, moves that quickened and became sustained with the reforms introduced from 1991 by Manmohan Singh as finance minister, a platform built upon by successive governments (including his own since 2004) in the next twenty years. The focus is on analysing the profound ambivalence that characterises both the rhetoric and practise of the politics of poverty in India.