Main Banner Image

Defensive cooperation: Understanding pro-social attitudes in Indian Muslims

Mainstream theories of development predict greater willingness to contribute to public goods in more homogeneous settings. This article reports findings from a study in Delhi slums to assess how Hindu...

  • Articles

Reporting of gender-based violence: Why public activism and dialogue matter

The recent case of an on-duty female doctor being brutally raped and murdered in a Kolkata hospital, has sparked nation-wide protests and yet again raised serious questions and concerns around women...

  • Articles

Affirmative action in credit markets: Can it enhance minorities’ welfare?

In 2009, as part of a Government of India programme to improve the welfare of religious minorities, commercial banks were directed to increase credit to these groups. This article finds that the polic...

  • Articles
Refine list by:
--Please Select--
--Please Select--

Expanding opportunities in India’s labour market: Gender, skills, and migration

In September 2019, the International Growth Centre (IGC) organised a panel discussion in New Delhi to bring together experts to deliberate on the evidence around the causes of low female labour force ...

  • Videos

What can Question Hour tell us about representation in the Indian Parliament?

Is a numeric representation of Indian Members of Parliament (MPs) from particular sociological backgrounds important to achieve a substantive representation of their group interests? This article answ...

  • Articles

IGC Special Lecture: To be or not to be

In December 2019, an international conference on ‘Closing the gender gap: Health, education and economic opportunities’ was held at Patna, Bihar. Development economist and activist, Devaki Jain, d...

  • Videos

Empowering women through direct digital wage payments

India’s rate of female labour force participation dropped from 37% in 1990 to 28% in 2015. Can greater control over earned income incentivise women to work and influence gender norms? This article d...

  • Articles

Creating safe public spaces for women and alcohol consumption in bars

Bars provide on-premise alcohol consumption and serve as social drinking spaces. Kerala, in 2014, shut down all bars serving hard liquor in the state. This article examines the policy change and wheth...

  • Articles

Fifteen years of gender budgeting in India: A Retrospective

In this year’s Union Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that she will constitute a committee to evaluate 15 years of gender budgeting. It entails looking at the budget through the...

  • Videos

Coping with a policy shock in rural South India: Social networks as a determinant of trust

Trust and participation in social networks are inherently interrelated. This article identifies the determinants of trust in rural South India, where a mechanism of coping with shocks through transact...

  • Articles

Closing gender gaps in India: Does increasing women’s access to finance help?

Gender gaps in women’s economic opportunities – in the labour market and in entrepreneurship – have remained high in India. This article analyses the macroeconomic impact of closing gender gaps ...

  • Articles

Inequality of opportunity among Indian women

Inequality of opportunity (IOp) in any society is that part of overall inequality which arises from factors beyond an individual’s control such as parental education, caste, gender, religion etc. Th...

  • Articles

Prevalence and evolution of dowry in India

Dowry payments are an important part of household finances in India, typically exceeding a year of earnings. This article analyses data from an all-India sample of over 70,000 marriages to document fa...

  • Articles

Traditional hierarchies and affirmative action in a globalising economy: Evidence from India

India has had a long-standing policy of affirmative action to address deep-rooted caste inequities and discrimination. This article compares successive age cohorts of three broad social groups – Sch...

  • Articles

Women’s work and fertility: Evidence from 200 years, 103 countries

The declining rates of female labour force participation in developing countries in the last two decades have led researchers to focus on the role of fertility in women’s labour supply decisions. Us...

  • Articles

Recent Contributors

Punarjit

Punarjit Roychowdhury

Shiv Nadar University

Bharti

Bharti Nandwani

Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (I

Asha

Asha Sundaram

University of Auckland

Debasis

Debasis Bandyopadhyay

University of Auckland

James

James Allan Jones

University of Auckland

Poulomi

Poulomi Chakrabarti

Harvard University

Melani

Melani Cammett

Harvard University

View all Contributors

Most Popular Social Identity Posts

Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials in India: An update

Building on past research, Saswata Ghosh and Pallabi Das estimate the state- and district-level fertility differentials between Hindus and Muslims using data from the latest round of the NFHS. They sh...

  • Articles

A division of labourers: Caste identity and efficiency in India

Castes in India are closely associated with certain occupations and determine the jobs done by millions. This study uses a new dataset to show that a large proportion of workers still work in their ca...

  • Articles

Sex ratios and religion in India and South Asia

In South Asia, low child sex ratios are increasingly an isolated Indian phenomenon. Within India, child sex ratios are ‘normal’ among Christians and Muslims but much lower among Hindus, Sikhs, and...

  • Articles