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Tag Search: “public service delivery”

Budget 2021-22: Over-reliance on infrastructure investment to spur growth?

Commenting on the strong infrastructure push in the 2021-22 Budget, Sarmistha Pal argues that an emphasis on investment in infrastructure may not necessarily bring India out of the current economic re...

  • Perspectives

An assessment of policy performance under the current regime

Commenting on the recent policy paper by Subramanian-Felman, Maitreesh Ghatak discusses why – looking at the same numbers – he would tend to be less generous in his grades for the performance of polic...

  • Perspectives

“New Welfarism”: Old wine, new bottles?

Commenting on the recent policy paper by Subramanian and Felman, R Nagaraj contends that the authors imaginative re-branding of the erstwhile ‘populist schemes’ as “New Welfarism of the Right” is an e...

  • Perspectives

Diversity and public goods: Why the geographical unit of analysis matters

Research has shown that regions with higher caste diversity have lower share of villages with essential public goods. This article challenges this finding and shows that empirical models estimated at ...

  • Articles

Balancing corruption and exclusion: Comment on the response

The role of Aadhaar in reducing corruption in the PDS has been highly controversial. In a recent I4I article, Muralidharan et al. summarised the insights of their study of Aadhaar-based biometric auth...

  • Perspectives

Examining the macro effects of MNREGA

While numerous micro-founded studies examine the household-level effects of MNREGA, little is known about its aggregate macro effects and long-term benefits to output, if any. Analysing district-level...

  • Articles

Teacher accountability: Non-teaching work over classroom engagement

While the Right to Education Act, 2009 mandates 200 days of teaching for primary classes, the actual number seems to be much lower in government schools. Based on qualitative fieldwork and a survey in...

  • Notes from the Field

Balancing corruption and exclusion: A response

The role of Aadhaar in reducing corruption in PDS has been highly controversial. In a recent I4I article, Muralidharan et al. summarised the results of their study in Jharkhand, which confirmed the 'p...

  • Perspectives

Locked out of critical care: Covid-19 lockdown and non-Covid mortality

India’s 10-week long national lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19 was among the most severe in the world. This article investigates the effects of the lockdown restrictions on healthcare access...

  • Articles

Balancing corruption and exclusion: A rejoinder

The role of Aadhaar in reducing corruption in the PDS has been highly controversial. In a recent I4I article, Muralidharan et al. summarised the insights of their study of Aadhaar-based biometric auth...

  • Perspectives

Subsidies, merit goods, and fiscal space - II

In Part I of this two-part series, the authors presented their estimates of total budget subsidies, and their merit and non-merit components. In this part, they discuss the relationship between subsid...

  • Perspectives

Subsidies, merit goods, and fiscal space - I

Mundle and Sikdar argue that rationalisation of the prevailing large volume of non-merit subsidies should constitute a major component of deep fiscal reforms in India. Doing so could free up the fisca...

  • Perspectives