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Shamika Ravi
Shamika Ravi is a Fellow, Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institute, India Center. Dr Shamika Ravi’s research is in the area of development economics with a focus on gender inequality and democracy, and financial inclusion and health. She also serves as an assistant professor of economics at the Indian School of Business, where she teaches courses on game theory and microfinance. She is also a faculty affiliate at the Financial Access Initiative of New York University. She is part of the Enforcement Directorate of Microfinance Institutions Network in India and has serves as a director on boards of several microfinance institutions. Professor Ravi has published extensively in academic journals and writes regularly in leading newspapers.
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Workfare as an effective way to fight poverty: The case of India's MNREGA
The fundamental appeal of a workfare programme, vis-à-vis a welfare programme, is that it helps in targeting the beneficiaries. This column assesses the welfare impact of MNREGA on poor rural households. It finds that the programme had a significant effect on extreme poverty in the first few years of implementation by improving food security, financial inclusion and mental health.
Why some poverty-fighting programmes show no net impact
An increasingly popular way to tackle acute poverty is ‘targeting the ultra-poor’. The scheme provides not only money but also training and support and has been hailed a huge success in its origin country Bangladesh. But this column evaluates a copycat scheme in southern India and finds that the gains are met by losses elsewhere and that, overall, the effect is minimal.