15 March, 2024India’s Women’s Reservation Act: A big win for governance and beyond
Amidst debates about the recently passed women's reservation act and whether it will reduce gender disparities on the ground, Wattal and Gopalan summarise evidence from a number of randomised evaluati...
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Akshara Gopalan Urvashi Wattal 
15 December, 2023
- Perspectives
The distributional consequences of political reservations
This article identifies and attempts to fill in the gaps in understanding the effects of reservations for Scheduled Castes (SCs) in Panchayats. Using data from a state-wide census, multiple administra...
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Chinmaya Kumar M.R. Sharan
- 28 November, 2023
- Articles
The complexity of female empowerment interventions
In the final post of I4I’s month-long campaign to mark International Women’s Day 2023, Siwan Anderson unpacks the complex dimensions and interactions between measures of female empowerment. She hi...
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Siwan Anderson
- 30 March, 2023
- Perspectives
Entrepreneurship or survival? Caste and gender of small business in India
Can entrepreneurship be a vehicle for social mobility in India? This column analyses data from micro, small and medium enterprises, and finds clear and persistent caste and gender disparities in virtu...
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Ashwini Deshpande Smriti Sharma
- 23 September, 2013
- Articles
Caste and entrepreneurship in India
It is now widely accepted that the lower castes have risen in Indian politics. Has there been a corresponding change in their entrepreneurial activity? This column seeks to answer this question by ana...
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Lakshmi Iyer Tarun Khanna Ashutosh Varshney
- 26 August, 2013
- Articles
Combating gender imbalance through legislation
The rapid decline in the sex ratio in India over the past few decades is an artefact of the historically strong preference for sons over daughters. To address the problem, the Indian government passed...
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Anil Deolalikar Arindam Nandi
- 16 August, 2013
- Articles
The power of women's political voice
With more women in power, can India’s women expect to see a fall in violent crime committed against them? This column looks at the effect of a law to mandate minimum numbers for women in public offi...
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Lakshmi Iyer Anandi Mani
- 17 June, 2013
- Articles
Does caste influence access to agricultural loans in rural India?
Increasing access to agricultural credit in rural India is a major policy priority. This column examines whether farmers’ access to formal agricultural loans depends on their caste. It is found that...
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Sunil Mitra Kumar
- 03 June, 2013
- Articles
Casteism and corruption: Beyond political correctness
Sociologist Ashis Nandy’s recent remark that most corrupt people belong to lower castes drew a lot of flak. In this column, Pranab Bardhan shares his views on what he considers to be the two substan...
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Pranab Bardhan
- 12 April, 2013
- Perspectives
Saving Behaviour in India: Understanding the differences across castes
The past three decades in India have witnessed a sharp reduction in the historically large gaps in the education levels, occupation choices and wages of the backward castes relative to the rest of the...
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Viktoria Hnatkovska Amartya Lahiri
- 01 March, 2013
- IGC Research on India
Does mother's status affect the child's stature?
Both women’s status and children’s health in South Asia are abysmal. Can a well-defined link be established from women’s status to child health? This column presents results of a study that uses...
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Diane Coffey
- 22 February, 2013
- Articles
Violence against married women in India: Can the data tell us anything?
Violence against women in India has recently been brought to the world’s attention. But for too long the problem has been under reported. This column looks at what the data can tell us.
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Sreeparna Ghosh
- 11 February, 2013
- Articles
Infant mortality in times of recession
Can recessions have permanent effects on people’s health in developing countries? This column looks at infant mortality in India and finds that recessions make things worse. The paradox is that this...
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Sonia Bhalotra
- 30 January, 2013
- Articles
Looking for icons to transform social norms
What can be done to reduce the incidence of rape? This article proposes that messages from role models such as cricketers and film stars can change outlooks. It outlines a strategy for measuring the e...
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Debraj Ray
- 28 January, 2013
- Perspectives
India's missing women by age and state
This column presents results of a study that breaks down “missing women” by age across the Indian states. It illustrates that Indian women face the risk of excess mortality at every stage of their...
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Siwan Anderson Debraj Ray
- 11 January, 2013
- Articles
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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...
- Guilhem Cassan Daniel Keniston Tatjana Kleineberg
- 18 November, 2022
- 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...
- Swati Narayan
- 03 April, 2019
- Articles
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...
- Pallabi Das Saswata Ghosh
- 18 April, 2023
- Articles