Introduction 1. Drought and Hunger Starving the Poor Fragile Lifelines, Robust Oppression The Right to Food and Public Accountability Memories of Kusumatand (with Bela Bhatia) The Dark Well of Hunger 2. Poverty The Poverty Trap On the Poverty Line Beyond Small Mercies Squaring the Poverty Circle (with Angus Deaton) 3. School Meals Hunger in the Classroom (with Vivek S.) Food for Equality Midday Meals and the Joy of Learning Caste, Class, and Eggs 4. Health Care Health Checkup India Leapfrogged Health at Sixty-six Small Leap Forward in Child Health Kerala Tops, Gujarat Flops, Bihar Hops (with Reetika Khera) 5. Child Development and Elementary Education Class Struggle (with the PROBE Team) The Welfare State in Tamil Nadu Children Under Six: Out of Focus Struggling to Learn (with Anuradha De, Meera Samson, and A.K.

Shiva Kumar) Progress of Children Under Six 6. Employment Guarantee Employment as a Social Responsibility Employment Guarantee and Its Discontents Myths and Reality of Corruption (with Reetika Khera and Siddhartha) Employment Guarantee or Slave Labour? Guaranteeing Productive Work 7. Food Security and the Public Distribution System Food Security Act: Indecent Proposal? The PDS Turnaround in Chhattisgarh (with Reetika Khera) Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System (with Reetika Khera) The Food Security Debate in India Poor States Catch Up 8. Corporate Power and Technocracy Glucose for the Lok Sabha? (with Reetika Khera) Nehruvian Budget in the Corporate Age Unique Identity Dilemma The Aadhaar Coup Dark Clouds over the PDS 9. War and Peace Nuclear Deterrence: From MAD to Worse The Future of War in Retrospect Kashmir: Manufacturing Ethnic Conflict The Warped Logic of Nuclear Gambles India and the Deal: Partner or Pawn? Kashmir's Hidden Uprising 10. Top-Up Rang de Basti (with Bela Bhatia) Voting in Maoist Land The Bribing Game The Quiet Grip of Caste The Gujarat Muddle On the Mythology of Social Policy The Bullet Train Syndrome The Mother of All Disruptions Decoding Universal Basic Income Development and Public-spiritedness.