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
Political clientelism in MNREGA: Evidence from West Bengal
The problem of political clientelism becomes imminent in decentralised systems where certain individuals or groups associated with the political party locally in power, get preferential access to sca...
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Upasak Das
- 25 June, 2014
- Articles
Emerging challenges: Economic and social
To mark the second anniversary of I4I in July 2014, we invited two eminent scholars – Abhijit Banerjee (MIT) and Mukul Kesavan (Jamia Milia) to discuss the emerging economic and social challenges in...
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Abhijit Banerjee Mukul Kesavan Ashok Kotwal
- 06 June, 2014
- Videos
Do women in power have an impact on corruption?
The recently elected 16th Lok Sabha of India will have a record number of 61 women parliamentarians. This column assesses whether women in the labour force or positions of power can have an impact on...
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Chandan Kumar Jha Sudipta Sarangi
- 21 May, 2014
- Articles
What voters reward: Evidence from the 2009 Indian parliamentary elections
Do voters care about economic outcomes? This column analyses the 2009 parliamentary elections in India and finds that voters favoured parties that delivered high growth in their states and rejected t...
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Poonam Gupta Arvind Panagariya
- 12 May, 2014
- Articles
Can workfare programmes moderate violence?
It is widely known that income shocks may trigger spurts of violence. This column explores whether workfare programmes can help mitigate support for violent movements. It finds that MNREGA has had a ...
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Thiemo Fetzer
- 05 May, 2014
- Articles
Open defecation in cities: A faltering India story
Despite significant public investment in urban sanitation, over 37 million people in Indian cities resort to open defecation. This column examines the existing information on open defecation in urban...
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Dinesh Mehta Meera Mehta
- 23 April, 2014
- Articles
Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the most dynamic state of them all?
This column analyses the economic performance of 16 major Indian states over the last three decades. It finds that Bihar has improved the most during the 2000s, Kerala has always been a star performe...
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Maitreesh Ghatak Sanchari Roy
- 23 March, 2014
- Articles
Governance by ordinance
The UPA government recently explored taking the ordinance route to promulgate six anti-corruption bills. This article traces the shift from the post-Independence culture of healthy parliamentary deba...
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Pushparaj Deshpande
- 17 March, 2014
- Perspectives
Direct Benefits Transfer: An idea whose time has come
About a year ago, the Government of India launched a Direct Benefits Transfer programme that involves transferring government benefits and subsidies directly to residents through a biometric identifi...
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Varad Pande
- 14 March, 2014
- Notes from the Field
Has community monitoring helped reduce corruption in public programme delivery?
MNREGA mandates social audits of public work projects undertaken under the Act in order to empower beneficiaries to scrutinise programme expenditures, and monitor programme delivery. Has community mo...
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Farzana Afridi Vegard Iversen
- 12 March, 2014
- Articles
India's illiberal speech climate
India’s cultural watchdogs and hate speech laws are increasingly seeking to restrict free expression in the country. This article contends that the right to take offence is fundamentally incompatib...
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Parikshit Ghosh
- 05 March, 2014
- Perspectives
Re-conceptualising crime and punishment
A Delhi court has awarded the death penalty to the convicts in the December 2012 gangrape incident. This article discusses the moral basis and dangers of relying on this form of punishment for deterr...
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Pushparaj Deshpande
- 26 February, 2014
- Perspectives
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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