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Tag Search: “public service delivery”

Education reform and frontline administrators: A case study from Bihar - I

The frontline administration in India is infamous for corruption and patronage, indifference towards citizens, low effort and high absenteeism. This column reports findings from a year-long qualitati...

  • Articles

Tackling India's dengue problem

The dengue virus has infected 25,000 people in India this year, with about 6,000 in Delhi alone. In this article, Chandrakant Lahariya, a public health policy expert, contends that the dengue situati...

  • Perspectives

Outlays to Outcomes: Understanding pathways to improving learning outcome

This project responds to a specific Government of Bihar request to assess the effectiveness of its "Mission Gunvatta" programme, which aimed at improving the learning outcomes of children attending el...

  • IGC Research on India

What do we know about corruption in India?

Despite ample media coverage of corruption, there remains a gap between headline-making scandals, policy options under discussion, and the actual evidence base drawn from empirical research on corrup...

  • Articles

Is the MNREGA fund crunch making the programme clientelistic?

Fund allocation for MNREGA has seen a steady decline in real terms over the last few years. Analysing official MNREGA data along with survey data from Rajasthan, this column shows that in the face of...

  • Articles

The significance of local power structures in Bihar's coupon-based PDS

In 2007, Bihar introduced the coupon system in PDS to curb leakages at fair price shops. This column argues that even though the administrative logic of the coupon system is fundamentally sound, such...

  • Articles

PDS computerisation: What other states can learn from Kerala

Given the leakage in the Public Distribution System, Indian states are being encouraged to computerise their PDS. This column analyses Kerala’s experience with PDS computerisation and highlights mech...

  • Articles

Citizens' trust in local politicians and implications for good governance

The new state of Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in June 2014, after a prolonged movement by the people of Telangana region for a separate state. Based on field experiments among citizens ...

  • Articles

How effective are gram sabhas?

Village panchayats across India are mandated to organise local public meetings called gram sabhas several times a year, wherein villagers discuss issues such as local public good provision. This colu...

  • Articles

14th Finance Commission: A trust-based approach towards local governments

The 14th Finance Commission has been hailed as ‘path-breaking’ for recommending larger fund allocations to state governments and giving them more autonomy in spending these funds. In this article, Me...

  • Perspectives

The Chhattisgarh experience and the National Food Security Act

Many of the reforms introduced under the National Food Security Act are modeled on PDS reforms implemented in Chhattisgarh. These reforms are widely believed to be responsible for the state’s success...

  • Articles

Getting centre-state relations right for health in India

The 14th Finance Commission has recommended devolving a greater share of revenues to states in order to give them more control over spending. In this article, Amanda Glassman and Anit Mukherjee exami...

  • Perspectives