Poverty, health and social networks

Strengthening of social networks could help mitigate market and government policy failures by facilitating upward income/expenditure transitions

Notwithstanding leakages, conjectures and hastily constructed estimates of poverty, the poverty narrative during the NDA regime abounds in assertions that are often contradictory, and mostly fail to inform, if not mislead. With growth hollowing out for lack of domestic demand, compounded by the devastation wreaked by COVID-19 not just in India but globally, and a lacklustre Budget for 2020-21 that has squeezed health and social safety net outlays, the prospects of any economic improvement for large segments of the population are becoming grimmer by the day. Our analysis focuses on associations between poverty transitions and health deprivation that call for