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From numbers to impact: Learning from effective data management in Rajasthan

Access to good data is critical for evidence-based decision-making in policy. In this note, Santhosh and Kapur discuss insights from a study of Rajasthan’s experience with collecting, sharing and us...

  • Notes from the Field

Reshaping social protection in India

As India has undergone a transformation in recent decades in terms of trends such as poverty reduction, food security and urbanisation, there is a need to also revamp the traditional social protection...

  • Perspectives

The growing wave of decentralisation: Comparative evidence from developing countries

Over the last few decades, decentralisation has been rapidly spreading in developing countries across the world, with around 35 countries announcing new or deepening decentralisation reforms in recent...

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The alcoholic mammaries of the welfare State

Tamil Nadu is known to give away more freebies to voters than any other state and these are financed mainly by massive revenues from liquor sales. In this article, Swaminathan Aiyar, Consulting Editor...

  • Articles

Impact of Electronic Voting Machines on electoral frauds, democracy, and development

In an attempt to curb electoral malpractices, Electronic Voting Machines were introduced on a national scale by the Election Commission of India in the 1990s. Using data from state assembly elections ...

  • Articles

The first two years of Modi government

In this article, Pranab Bardhan, Professor of Graduate School at the Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, provides his perspective on the performance of the Modi government in ...

  • Perspectives

Aadhaar Bill: UID without excessively compromising privacy?

Can something like UID be created without compromising privacy beyond acceptable limits? If so, how should the Aadhaar Bill have been written? What are its specific and avoidable weaknesses?

  • Perspectives

Aadhaar Bill: Move towards a surveillance State?

Most advanced economies have had some version of UID for a long time, example, the Social Security number in the US, the Social Insurance Number in Canada, etc. This is recorded not only in interactio...

  • Perspectives

Aadhaar Bill and government benefits: Risk of increasing exclusion?

Supporters of Aadhaar express the hope that will reduce inclusion errors and corruption by eliminating ghost beneficiaries, say in schemes like MNREGA. Are there substantial benefits to be reaped on t...

  • Perspectives

Aadhaar Bill and government benefits: Better targeting and reduced corruption?

Supporters of Aadhaar express the hope that will reduce inclusion errors and corruption by eliminating ghost beneficiaries, say in schemes like MNREGA. Are there substantial benefits to be reaped on t...

  • Perspectives

Debate: The Aadhaar Bill

In a debate on the Aadhaar Bill, commentators from academia and civil society will weigh in on issues around potential benefits and privacy concerns.

  • Symposium

Aadhaar Bill: Incremental information-gathering powers for government?

The government already has the means to collect a lot of information on citizens (example, phone conversations and logs, credit card transactions, income tax records, bank account details, etc.). Conv...

  • Perspectives

Quality of governance and welfare outcomes

As the MDGs gave way to the SDGs, considerable attention has been focussed on movements in key welfare indicators for women and children in the past decade. In this context, this column compares India...

  • Perspectives

Rethinking clientelism: Politics of service delivery in rural India

Clientelism is often blamed for public service delivery failures in developing countries. While the top-down drivers of political support in exchange for service delivery for specific constituents is ...

  • Perspectives

Local political elite capture and BPL card allocation

There is significant anecdotal evidence for the fact that local political connections at the grassroots level is an important channel through which leakages take place in welfare schemes in India such...

  • Articles

Recent Contributors

Wendy

Wendy Wong

University of Chicago

Souryabrata

Souryabrata Mohapatra

National Council of Applied Economic Research

Avani

Avani Kapur

Centre for Policy Research

Sidharth

Sidharth Santhosh

Centre for Policy Research

Neeraj

Neeraj Hatekar

Independent Researcher

Puja

Puja Guha

Azim Premji University

Amalendu

Amalendu Jyotishi

Azim Premji University

Ejaz

Ejaz Ghani

Pune International Centre

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Most Popular Governance Posts

Unique Health Identification and Aadhaar: A case for mandatory linkage

As part of the Digital India initiative, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) issues a Unique Health Identification (UHID) number to each patient, which documents their entire journey in th...

  • Perspectives

Caste dominance in rural India: Cause and effect

Rural India remains a caste-based society. This column explores why caste continues to play such an important role and what the effects are. It argues that trade and agricultural productivity suffer, ...

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Why did the Indian economy stagnate under the colonial rule?

How did the Indian economy fare under the colonial rule? Is the average Indian significantly better off after Independence? This column examines trends in GDP per capita in order to determine the stan...

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