Public Spending for Protecting the Poor during Economic Reforms: Myth or Reality? Evidence from Orissa

Abstract

The prevalence of widespread poverty and deprivation in Orissa points towards the need for a comprehensive social security that would include judicious mix of promotional measure on the one hand, and preventive and protective measures put together on the other. This article advocates this as the state, based on trends, level and patterns of social security expenditure between 1987-2005, is not only devoting a low proportion of GSDP and total expenditure to social security measures but a very inadequate financing for preventive and protective measures during reform periods which mostly address the contingencies need of working poor as well as of non-working destitute- who have little or no income, being unable to work, because of age, disability or other reasons- and who are supposed to be bypassed by the conventional anti- poverty programmes.