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Tag Search: “democracy”

Covid-19: Is it time to decentralise power?

Raghuram Rajan speaks to Econ Film’s CoronaNomics show, on the merits of de-centralised governance in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic, how local authorities can be empowered, and the risk of ...

  • Videos

Do politicians receive special treatment in courts?

Do Members of Legislative Assemblies (MLAs) facing pending criminal cases receive favourable treatment in the Indian legal system? This article uncovers opposite effects of winning office, depending o...

  • Articles

Do roads bring votes in rural India?

A large-scale rural roads programme in India has provided access to over two-third of villages that lacked a paved road in 2001. Do citizens reward incumbent governments electorally for these improvem...

  • Articles

Oral democracy

Critical scrutiny of the challenges of electoral democracy including elite capture, corruption, and patronage has led to a revival of the idea of direct democracy – giving power directly to groups of ...

  • Articles

Parikshit Ghosh speaks with Debraj Ray

In this podcast, Parikshit Ghosh (Member of the I4I Editorial Board & Associate Professor, Delhi School of Economics) speaks with Debraj Ray (Julius Silver Professor, Faculty of Arts and Science, and ...

  • Podcasts

The state of the economy and mass perception

In this article, Ashwini Kulkarni of NGO Pragati Abhiyan contends that the media should tap into the knowledge of practitioners that are familiar with the ground realities of social sector schemes – r...

  • Perspectives

A proposal for public funding of elections and political parties in India

The Finance Minister of India recently introduced measures aimed at cleaning up political party funding in the country. In this article, Gowda and Santhosh highlight the limitations of these measures,...

  • Perspectives

Consumption spikes and election delays

There is ample anecdotal evidence on political parties bribing voters with cash or consumption goods prior to elections, in India and other developing countries. However, there is an expected lack of ...

  • Articles

Do Gram Panchayat leaders favour their own constituencies in MNREGA fund allocation?

Political incentives are known to play a role in the allocation of public resources from upper- to lower-tier governments. This column seeks to examine whether ruling parties in local governments favo...

  • Articles

Politician's pain is poor man's gain: Income distribution in close-election constituencies

Studies have highlighted the role of electoral competition in directing the flow of public funds. Analysing data from India, this column finds lower income inequality and polarisation in tightly conte...

  • Articles

Courting women's votes: What does this mean for women?

In the recent state assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, political parties targeted women voters with specific handouts and proposed policies such as alcohol bans. This column contends that while the in...

  • Articles

Does democracy cause growth?

Many analysts view democracy as a neutral or negative factor for growth. This column discusses new evidence showing that democracy has a robust and sizeable pro-growth effect. It finds that a country ...

  • Articles