The worldwide explosion of social welfare has been described as the “quiet revolution” of our time. This paper analyses the expansion of social welfare in India during the early part of the 2000s. What explains this expansion of encompassing social welfare in India, following a history of disparate and fragmented social policies? The answer, I argue, lies in recognizing the importance of the “politics of the poor,” the ensemble of negotiations that encompass both electoral participation and contentious politics vis-à-vis the political institutions in India. The paper develops this argument by drawing together insights from discursive institutionalism, Indian politics, and the politics of welfare literature. Doing so enables me to examine the ways in which poor people’s political practices were interpreted by India’s parliamentarians to justify the legislation of India’s flagship social welfare program the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. I analyze the discourses communicated through 78 parliamentary debates in English and Hindi to enact the law. I blend this analysis with process tracing of electoral behavior of India’s poor and the Maoist insurrection that exploded in the country’s poorest districts at the turn of the century.

中文翻译：

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福利如何获胜：21世纪初印度的话语制度主义、穷人的政治以及社会福利的扩张

全球范围内社会福利的爆炸式增长被描述为我们这个时代的“安静的革命”。本文分析了 2000 年代初期印度社会福利的扩张。在经历了截然不同且支离破碎的社会政策的历史之后，如何解释印度社会福利的包容性扩张？我认为，答案在于认识到“穷人的政治”的重要性，这是一个涵盖选举参与和针对印度政治机构的有争议政治的谈判整体。本文通过汇集话语制度主义、印度政治和福利文学政治的见解来发展这一论点。这样做使我能够研究印度议员如何解释穷人的政治实践，以证明印度旗舰社会福利计划《国家农村就业保障法》立法的合理性。我分析了 78 场议会辩论中用英语和印地语传达的话语，以制定该法律。我将这一分析与印度穷人的选举行为以及世纪之交在该国最贫困地区爆发的毛派起义的过程追踪结合起来。