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Camille Boudot-Reddy
Camille Boudot-Reddy is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Economics at Birkbeck, University of London. She received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh. Prior to this she worked as a Research Manager for the Centre for Microfinance (CMF) in India and a Project Associate for Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) in Mali. Her research has leveraged both experimental and quasi-experimental methods with newly assembled datasets to better understand constraints to local economic development and its consequences on the political economy.
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Watering the seeds of the rural economy: Evidence from groundwater irrigation in India
Over time, technological advancements accompanied with government energy subsidies have made groundwater the single largest source of irrigation in India. This study evaluates the impact of access to groundwater irrigation on the spatial and sectoral distribution of rural economic activity. It finds a significant improvement in agricultural production accompanied with modest consumption gains, as well as a substantial increase in population density. Access to groundwater also appears to provide additional employment opportunities for agricultural wage labour from surrounding non-irrigated villages.
Barriers to basic banking in India
The Indian government is promoting the Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and mobile banking – or the “JAM trinity” — as the pathway to financial inclusion. But are banks capable or even willing take on their role in this ambitious agenda? Based on a field study in Chennai, this column highlights the range of costs and constraints imposed by banks on customers attempting to enter the formal financial sector.