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Is it better to be governed by an elected leader or appointed bureaucrat?

The division of governance functions and responsibilities between politicians and bureaucrats varies, both across and within political regimes. Based on an experiment in Karnataka, this article examin...

  • Articles

Why political competition matters when inequality is high

In a high-inequality setting, local politicians with secure positions may favour the rich by diverting resources towards them, at the cost of the poor. To test this hypothesis, this article analyses d...

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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
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Corruption and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

Corruption continues to strangle India’s public finances. This column presents evidence of embezzlement in India’s flagship rural employment programme and suggests new ways policymakers can test w...

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Understanding Mandis: Market Towns and the Dynamics of India's Rural and Urban Transformations

The idea behind this project is to undertake process-oriented investigations that will involve the study of interactions, especially between agricultural markets, settlements, technology, infrastructu...

  • IGC Research on India

Enhancing Local Public Service Delivery: Experimental Evidence on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Bihar

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGA) is among the largest social protection programmes in the world.

  • IGC Research on India

Third-party environmental auditing

High levels of industrial pollution are a harmful by-product of growth. The Indian state of Gujarat is an industrial powerhouse with about 5% of the Indian population, but 9% of India’s registered m...

  • IGC Research on India

Land Acquisition for Business and Compensation of Displaced Farmers

This project addresses the question of how farmers displaced by acquisition of agricultural land for the purpose of industrialisation ought to be compensated. Prior to acquisition, the farmers are lea...

  • IGC Research on India

Federal versus Regional Control: Implications for Groundwater Resource in India

Federal versus regional control over provision of resources can have different implications for long-run sustainability of natural resources. This project examines the trade-off between short-term gro...

  • IGC Research on India

Recent Contributors

Kanika

Kanika Mahajan

Ashoka University

Ritam

Ritam Chaurey

Johns Hopkins SAIS

Shekhar

Shekhar Tomar

Indian School of Business

Anubhab

Anubhab Pattanayak

IIT Kharagpur

K. S.

K. S. Kavi Kumar

Madras School of Economics

M.R.

M.R. Sharan

University of Maryland

Siddharth

Siddharth George

National University of Singapore

Vijayendra

Vijayendra Rao

World Bank

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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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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...

  • Perspectives