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
Digging for dirt: Rent-seeking among elected politicians in India’s mineral belt
The Indian mining industry is no stranger to corruption scandals and every year dozens of environmental activists are murdered for exposing illegal mining activities. This article discusses the impact...
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Samuel Asher Paul Novosad
- 10 November, 2020
- Articles
DUET: Decentralise employment generation to urban local bodies
Dilip Mookherjee supports Drèze’s suggestion to decentralise employment generation to urban local bodies, and contends that the moribund nature of urban local government is a key reason for the neg...
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Dilip Mookherjee
- 14 September, 2020
- Perspectives
Synchronised elections, voter behaviour, and governance outcomes
An active policy proposal of the Government of India is to hold national elections at the same time as the assembly elections of all the states. This article examines whether holding national and stat...
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Vimal Balasubramaniam Sabyasachi Das Apurav Yash Bhatiya
- 28 August, 2020
- Articles
Citizen-State relations: Countryside and city
To what extent do citizens expect officials to respond to local problems, and how do they make demands on the State to advance their well-being? Based on surveys in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, this ...
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Adam Auerbach Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner
- 24 August, 2020
- Articles
Does political reservation work, and for whom?
Does political reservation undermine or promote development, and for whom? This article presents an analysis of India’s Scheduled Areas, which reserve political office for the historically disadvant...
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Saad Gulzar Nicholas Haas Ben Pasquale
- 11 August, 2020
- Articles
Covid-19: Is it time to decentralise power?
Raghuram Rajan speaks to Econ Film’s CoronaNomics show, on the merits of de-centralised governance in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic, how local authorities can be empowered, and the risk o...
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Raghuram Rajan
- 24 July, 2020
- Videos
The politics of post-retirement appointments: Corruption in the Supreme Court?
The Indian judiciary bats for judicial independence. Wary of executive interference, judges ferociously protect their institutional turf. But does India’s judicial system suffer from an underhanded ...
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Madhav Aney Shubhankar Dam Giovanni Ko
- 15 June, 2020
- Articles
Court congestion, caste identity, and business performance
Effective contract enforcement is the key for the formation and expansion of business enterprises. But how does improvement in court performance matter differently to different caste groups? This arti...
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Tanika Chakraborty Anirban Mukherjee Sarani Saha Divya Shukla
- 14 May, 2020
- Articles
Kerala’s management of Covid-19: Key learnings
Kerala was the first Indian state to be affected by Covid-19 with the highest number of cases at one point in time, but today it has a flat infection curve and one of the highest recovery rates in Ind...
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S.M. Vijayanand
- 02 May, 2020
- Perspectives
How district courts influence firm growth
The Economic Survey 2018-19 highlights that the single biggest constraint to ease of doing business in India is contract enforcement and dispute resolution, and increasing capacity in lower judiciary ...
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Manaswini Rao
- 29 January, 2020
- Articles
Electoral cycles and incomplete public works projects: An analysis of the MPLAD scheme
The successful execution of public works programmes undertaken by governments often hinges on the completion of a vast array of local-level projects intended to create tangible amenities to improve th...
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Jonathan Darsey Anjali Thomas
- 08 January, 2020
- Articles
There are none so blind as they who will not see
Based on Government of India’s own data, the government and the community of economists in India have come up with different narratives about the position of Indian economy. In this post, Pronab Sen...
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Pronab Sen
- 16 December, 2019
- 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