Living with “Welfare Stigma”: Identity and Food Assistance Programme in India

Recent years have seen increased attention and revival of progressive welfare measures in India. Central to this is a more difficult project to analyse how public welfare exacerbate stigma for some more than the others. Based on a thematic review of existing literature, this paper aims to explore if universalistic or particularistic welfare programmes translate into higher stigma for more disadvantaged social groups. In doing so, it examines whether and to what extent historical differences in social identities influence the possibility of gradations of stigma among recipients of food assistance programme under India’s Public Distribution System. It attempts to understand caste through the framework of welfare dependency on two fronts. First, to understand the development of and experiments with welfare in India seeking to reconcile previous studies, and second, revive the historically significant idea of welfare stigma which is also distinctively situated within the Indian social structure. Recognizing the persistence of history, especially the inheritance of an unequal social order, is vital to understand why the persistence of caste-based stigma seem so difficult to govern and offers a clue as to why utilitarian policy solutions are unable to amend the concern of society.