Publication

Hirschman’s ‘bias for hope’ argument had long back drawn attention to an important though often overlooked fact that successful and failed developmental programmes are not mutually exclusive cases. A programme can both have failures and successes, thus it is critical not to lose sight of the ‘islands’ of successes within the ‘oceans’ of failed, or so understood, programmes. This wisdom must be recalled while recounting the peculiarities of the Indian developmental saga, best exemplified by the case of the Employment Assurance Programme (EAS) discussed in this paper.