Tag Search: “democracy”

Bihar verdict: Development, cow politics, and caste

The Nitish Kumar-led Grand Alliance of JD(U)-RJD-Congress defeated the Modi-led NDA in the recent Bihar assembly elections. In this article, Maitreesh Ghatak, Professor of Economics at the London Sch...

  • Perspectives

Role model effects? Women's political participation in India

Women’s political candidacy in India is very low and appears to be an important barrier to their representation in government. Does a deficiency of female role models hold back women’s candidacy? Ana...

  • Articles

The need for police reform

The police in India are still mainly governed by the Police Act of 1861. In this article, Abhijit Banerjee, Professor of Economics at MIT, emphasises the need for police reform in order to check misu...

  • Perspectives

He is a criminal but he is our criminal: Criminally accused politicians in India

The recent increase in the number of criminally-accused politicians elected to state assemblies has caused much furore in India. Despite the potentially important consequences and the widely divergent...

  • IGC Research on India

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

Strategically greasing the wheels: The political economy of India’s rural employment guarantee scheme

Inefficient and capacity-constrained bureaucracies often pose a significant hurdle to the effective implementation of anti-poverty programmes in developing countries.

  • IGC Research on India

Will India really grow faster than China?

According to the IMF, India will overtake China to be the fastest growing economy this year. In this article, Chetan Ghate and Peter Robertson assess the validity of this claim. In their view, the ch...

  • Perspectives

Impact of the two-child limit for local politicians

Some Indian states debar individuals with more than two children from contesting local elections. This column finds that while the law has significantly reduced fertility among the general population...

  • Articles

Enhancing women's participation in water governance

Women’s participation has become a key theme in water and sanitation projects. However, projects that have made provisions for women’s participation have yielded mixed results in terms of the quality...

  • Articles

Should the less educated be barred from village council elections?

In December 2014, the state government of Rajasthan issued an executive order barring citizens with less than eight years of formal education from running for village council chief elections in all b...

  • Perspectives

What voters reward: Evidence from the 2009 Indian parliamentary elections

Do voters care about economic outcomes? This column analyses the 2009 parliamentary elections in India and finds that voters favoured parties that delivered high growth in their states and rejected t...

  • Articles

Governance by ordinance

The UPA government recently explored taking the ordinance route to promulgate six anti-corruption bills. This article traces the shift from the post-Independence culture of healthy parliamentary deba...

  • Perspectives