24 September, 2025Election of criminal politicians and public service delivery
Why are politicians with criminal records elected to office, despite voters having the option to weed them out? Based on the hypothesis that criminal politicians strategically deliver targeted benefit...
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Abhinav Khemka 
18 September, 2025
- Articles
Boosting Lekhpal performance via data-driven feedback and recognition
The Lekhpals Actionable KPI System for Holistic Assessment and Management (LAKSHYAM) is an initiative to measure and enhance the work performance of Lekhpals, who are frontline functionaries of the Re...
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Fahad Hasin Sakshi Ugale
- 18 August, 2025
- Notes from the Field
Building State capacity for accelerating development through effective governance
In a new edition of I4I conversations, Maitreesh Ghatak (London School of Economics) is joined by Karthik Muralidharan (University of California, San Diego) to discuss his new book, Accelerating India...
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Maitreesh Ghatak Karthik Muralidharan
- 05 May, 2025
- Videos
Impact of fiscal decentralisation and ethnic heterogeneity on choice of local polity
In this article, based on Chapter 7 of 'Decentralised Governance’, Mitra and Pal utilise Indonesia’s fiscal decentralisation to local communities in 2001 to examine how FD may differentially affec...
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Anirban Mitra Sarmistha Pal
- 13 October, 2023
- Articles
Decentralised targeting of transfer programmes: A reassessment
Ahead of the release of ‘Decentralised Governance: Crafting Effective Democracies Around the World’, Dilip Mookherjee brings together some of the arguments against decentralisation of welfare prog...
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Dilip Mookherjee
- 25 September, 2023
- Perspectives
Forest Rights Act: An account of contradictory conservation laws
In the second of two articles about the implementation of Forest Rights Act, Bharti Nandwani uses data on land conflicts to investigate why land disputes increased after the introduction of FRA. She p...
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Bharti Nandwani
- 22 September, 2023
- Articles
Forest Rights Act: Political participation of indigenous communities
In the first of two articles about the implementation of Forest Rights Act, Bharti Nandwani looks at the implication of increased demand for land title recognition on political participation of Schedu...
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Bharti Nandwani
- 20 September, 2023
- Articles
Making the case for a common land registry
The lack of comprehensive data on India’s common lands affects conservation, resource use and land right conflicts. Chandran & Singh highlight the need for a national common land registry to reduce ...
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Pooja Chandran Subrata Singh
- 31 August, 2023
- Notes from the Field
Facilitating risk-sharing through self-help groups in Bihar
While the self-help group (SHG) programme in Bihar has improved access to low-cost credit for women, this article evaluates whether it improves risk-sharing by examining differences in village-level v...
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Orazio Attanasio Anjini Kochar Aprajit Mahajan Vaishnavi Surendra
- 16 August, 2023
- Articles
Impact of Bihar’s alcohol ban on intimate partner violence
This article examines the impact of a complete ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol in Bihar in 2016 on the incidence of intimate partner violence against women. Using NFHS data, it finds that a...
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Sisir Debnath Sourabh Paul Komal Sareen
- 27 July, 2023
- Articles
Is electrification in India fiscally sustainable?
In the first article in the Ideas@IPF2023 series, Barnwal and Ryan describe the completion of household electrification in India as a fiscal feat, notwithstanding the persistent losses recorded by ele...
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Prabhat Barnwal Nicholas Ryan
- 11 July, 2023
- Perspectives
Institutionalising social audits: Lessons from Meghalaya
Sidharth Santhosh summarises key findings from Meghalaya's experience of mandating social auditing for welfare schemes, including the need for stronger coalitions between citizens and the state, and g...
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Sidharth Santhosh
- 01 June, 2023
- Notes from the Field
Unpacking how MSMEs are defined in India’s manufacturing and services sector
The Indian government announced a number of reforms to help micro, small and medium enterprises that had been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic – including changes in how an MSMEs are classified. Ra...
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Rahul Ranjan
- 30 May, 2023
- Perspectives
The costs of extreme competition for government jobs
Indian states have highly competitive examinations for public service recruitment, with many youth remaining unemployed for long periods to compete for these government vacancies. Kunal Mangal looks a...
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Kunal Mangal
- 21 April, 2023
- Articles
How women in politics impact maternal mortality
In the twelfth post of I4I’s month-long campaign to mark International Women’s Day 2023, Bhalotra et al. show that mortality during and after childbirth remains high, even where the knowledge and ...
- Articles
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost 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...
- Mudit Kapoor
- 23 December, 2016
- 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, ...
- Siwan Anderson
- 16 August, 2012
- Articles
The digital dream: Upskilling India for the future
While the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the pace at which technology is becoming commonplace in our lives, it has also exposed a stark digital divide, leaving a large proportion of India’s popul...
- Venugopal Mothkoor Fatima Mumtaz
- 23 March, 2021
- Perspectives