How effective is Janani Suraksha Yojana?
Janani Suraksha Yojana - India’s safe motherhood programme – provides poor women with a financial incentive for delivering births at health centres and seeking antenatal and postnatal care. This column finds that the programme has had limited success. While women with no formal education and tho...
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Anusuya Sivaram Shareen Joshi 
18 December, 2014
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Human Development
Year: 2014
India's macroeconomic outlook
With falling inflation, high forex reserves and the new government embarking on a broad reform agenda, things seem to be looking up for India. In this article, Eswar Prasad shares his macroeconomic outlook for the economy. He provides his perspective on foreign inflows, disinvestment, fiscal positi...
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Eswar Prasad
- 16 December, 2014
- Perspectives
Content Type: Perspectives
Topic: Macroeconomics
Year: 2014
Response to the Bhagwati-Panagariya rejoinder on MNREGA
In a recent article, Abreu et al. refuted the Bhagwati-Panagariya argument for phasing out MNREGA in favour of cash transfers. In this article, Abreu et al. respond to claims in a rejoinder by Bhagwati-Panagariya, regarding net benefits of MNREGA employment, the self-selection feature of the progra...
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Ashok Kotwal Debraj Ray Dilip Mookherjee Dilip Abreu Maitreesh Ghatak Pranab Bardhan
- 14 December, 2014
- Perspectives
Content Type: Perspectives
Topic: Governance
Year: 2014
Should India embrace inflation targeting?
The Urjit Patel Committee recommended the formal adoption of an inflation targeting regime for India. In this article, Iyanatul Islam compares the views of the current RBI Governor with those of his predecessor on controlling inflation. He concludes that, at this stage, the incremental gains for th...
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Iyanatul Islam
- 12 December, 2014
- Perspectives
Content Type: Perspectives
Topic: Macroeconomics
Year: 2014
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...
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Shamika Ravi
- 11 December, 2014
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Poverty & Inequality
Year: 2014
Taxing Tobacco
The steep increase in excise taxes on cigarettes in this year’s Union Budget is a welcome move. However, this column argues that unless more commonly consumed bidis are also taxed heavily, the public health objectives of tobacco taxation will go up in smoke.
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Rijo M. John
- 09 December, 2014
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Human Development
Year: 2014
Financial inclusion for agricultural growth: An alternative approach
Traditional, group-based microcredit has had limited success at enabling farmers to expand the cultivation of risky but profitable cash crops. Evidence suggests that this is mainly because of its mechanisms for borrower selection and enforcement of repayment. This column proposes a new approach that...
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Alberto Motta Dilip Mookherjee Pushkar Maitra Sandip Mitra Sujata Visaria
- 08 December, 2014
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Agriculture
Year: 2014
Assessing the quality and usefulness of MNREGA assets in Maharashtra
Questions have been raised regarding the quality and usefulness of assets created under MNREGA. To examine the validity of the scepticism, this column reports results from a study of MNREGA assets in Maharashtra. While the assets are largely found to be useful and durable, the study suggests that g...
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Ashwini Kulkarni Krushna Ranavare Sudha Narayanan Upasak Das
- 05 December, 2014
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Governance
Year: 2014
Building state capacity for better programme implementation: Lessons from the Andhra Pradesh Smartcard Programme
Biometric payment systems are posited to reduce leakages in public welfare programmes but there is limited evidence on their effectiveness. This column presents evidence on the impact of the Andhra Pradesh Smartcard Programme on MNREGS and Social Security Pension beneficiaries, based on a large-sca...
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Karthik Muralidharan Paul Niehaus Sandip Sukhtankar
- 03 December, 2014
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Governance
Year: 2014
What's the plan for MNREGA?
The new government’s plans to scale back MNREGA have elicited a mixed response. In this article, Abhijit Banerjee contends that both supporters and critics, and indeed the entire nation, deserve to be told why this is the one programme of the previous government that has been singled out for the a...
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Abhijit Banerjee
- 02 December, 2014
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Governance
Year: 2014
Can services be a growth escalator in low-income countries?
Just like the East Asian Tigers, the Lions of Africa are now growing much faster than the developed economies. However, this column shows that the growth escalators in Africa are different than in East Asia. The East Asian Tigers benefitted from a rapidly expanding manufacturing sector. The African...
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Ejaz Ghani
- 01 December, 2014
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Macroeconomics
Year: 2014
Impact of Elite Capture on the Provision of Public Services
This project studies the effectiveness of major Government programmes in JEEViKA (Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project) villages versus others to see whether the presence of self-help groups leads to improved delivery of public services. By comparing the extent of elite capture in JEEViKA and non-JEEViKA...
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Joseph Vecci Lata Gangadharan Pushkar Maitra Tarun Jain
- 01 December, 2014
- IGC Research on India
Content Type: IGC Research on India
Topic: Governance
Year: 2014