The reach of social policy in India has expanded significantly in recent years. Facilities such as schools and anganwadis (child care centres) have become an accepted norm for every village; health centres are more accessible and better equipped; nutrition programmes, public works and social security pensions are reaching larger numbers of people than before. Some of these benefits now take the form of enforceable legal entitlements. Yet the performance of these social programmes is far from ideal. Most Indian states still have a long way to go in putting in place effective social policies that directly address the interests, demands and rights of the unprivileged. Social Policy is a collection of essays, previously published in the Economic and Political Weekly, on these and related issues. The 24 chapters have been clustered around six major themes: ?health?, ?education?, ?food security?, ?employment guarantee?, ?pensions and cash transfers? and ?inequality and social exclusion?. For the first time, wide-ranging analyses of these critical issues by distinguished scholars are brought together in a single volume. The wealth of data presented in these studies will be invaluable to researchers in this field