The irony of the Rawlsian legacy is that the difference principle has aroused the maximum interest in precisely those countries where social welfare policies have been the most developed – whereas in developing and more economically backward countries, like India, this aspect of Rawls’s early work has been virtually ignored. The Indian political scientist’s implicit refusal to engage with the most exciting part of the Rawlsian framework has left the discipline of political science itself in India the poorer for it.
