Welfare through workfare? Lessons from the early days of MNREGA
Workfare programmes are an old tool to provide necessary income support to the poorest in times of recessions, droughts, and now pandemics. Yet, these are often questioned for their effectiveness. As ever more workers have been rushing to public worksites across rural India in mid-2020, this article...
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Christian Oldiges Stefan Klonner 
16 December, 2020
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Poverty & Inequality
Year: 2020
Land disputes in ‘Santhal Parganas’: Issues and solutions
Four of the six districts in Santhal Parganas division of Jharkhand have been classified as ‘aspirational districts’ by NITI Aayog. In this note, Karn Satyarthi describes the unique manner in which land revenue administration works in the division, and the problems involved in land dispute resol...
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Karn Satyarthi
- 15 December, 2020
- Notes from the Field
Content Type: Notes from the Field
Topic: Governance
Year: 2020
Covid-19 crisis: Response should not undermine institutions
The unprecedented economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in calls for drastic actions on part of the government and RBI. In this post, Sengupta and Vardhan content that these actions often entail – explicitly or indirectly – undermining or even overriding established fra...
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Harsh Vardhan Rajeswari Sengupta
- 15 December, 2020
- Perspectives
Content Type: Perspectives
Topic: Macroeconomics
Year: 2020
Building resilience among ultra-poor for times of crisis
Lack of integration into the existing social protection system exacerbates the poor's vulnerabilities, leaving them without adequate support structures during a crisis. In this note, Shagun Sabarwal and Maximillian Lohnert discuss how investing in a livelihood project for the ultra-poor in Bihar pro...
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Maximilian Lohnert Shagun Sabarwal
- 11 December, 2020
- Notes from the Field
Content Type: Notes from the Field
Topic: Poverty & Inequality
Year: 2020
Webinar: Growing concern around violence against women
On 25 November 2020, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the India Programme of the International Growth Centre – in collaboration with the Asian Development Research Institute – organised a webinar on the ‘Growing concern around violence against women’, to d...
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Michele Mary Bernadine Nalini Gulati
- 10 December, 2020
- Videos
Content Type: Videos
Topic: Social Identity
Year: 2020
Information technology adoption and productivity: Role of mobile phones in Indian agriculture
During mid to late 2000s, India expanded mobile phone coverage across rural areas and introduced free-of-charge call centre services for farmers seeking agricultural advice. This article shows that these programmes helped increase the take-up of more advanced technologies and raised productivity of ...
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Andrea Tesei Apoorv Gupta Jacopo Ponticelli
- 09 December, 2020
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Agriculture
Year: 2020
Need for 10-year, state-wise procurement plan for rice and wheat
Against the backdrop of the ongoing debate around India’s new farm legislations, Hussain and Mohapatra make a case for having a 10-year plan indicating the targetted procurement of rice and wheat from each state, in order to reduce uncertainty caused by excessive production and procurement. Furthe...
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Jugal Mohapatra Siraj Hussain
- 08 December, 2020
- Perspectives
Content Type: Perspectives
Topic: Agriculture
Year: 2020
Ethnic identities, public spending, and political regimes
Do democracies discriminate less against minorities as compared to non-democracies? How does the dominance of an ethnic group affect discrimination under various political regimes? Presenting a theoretical model to address these questions, this article shows that political regime changes can favour ...
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Anirban Mitra Sugata Ghosh
- 07 December, 2020
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Governance
Year: 2020
Caste gaps in behaviour and personality traits: A study of university students
While numerous studies have examined gaps in health and educational outcomes across castes, there is little evidence on caste gaps in behavioural preferences and personality traits. Based on incentivised experiments and surveys among 2,000 undergraduate students of the University of Delhi – where ...
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Saurabh Singhal Smriti Sharma Subha Mani Utteeyo Dasgupta
- 04 December, 2020
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Social Identity
Year: 2020
Leveraging behavioural insights for informed policymaking
Application of behavioural insights – backed by decades of research in behavioural economics and social psychology – to the design and implementation of social programmes is gaining traction in India. In this post, Steven Walker outlines insights from a workshop that brought together various st...
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Steven Walker
- 03 December, 2020
- Perspectives
Content Type: Perspectives
Topic: Social Identity
Year: 2020
Pollution from coal-based power units and anaemic status of children and women
An extensive literature has considered the impact of air pollution on health. While studies have mainly focussed on outcomes such as general morbidity and mortality, this article evaluates the impact of pollution caused by coal-based power units on the anaemic status of young children and prime-age ...
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Gaurav Datt Nidhiya Menon Pushkar Maitra Ranjan Ray Sagnik Dey Sourangsu Chowdhury
- 02 December, 2020
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Human Development
Year: 2020
Does workfare work? MNREGA during Covid-19
In the wake of the large-scale return of migrant workers from cities to rural areas on account of the Covid-19 lockdowns and associated job losses, it was apparent that MNREGA would need to play a crucial role. The government responded by expanding the employment guarantee programme substantially du...
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Christian Oldiges Shree Saha Sudha Narayanan
- 01 December, 2020
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Poverty & Inequality
Year: 2020