18 February, 2022Budget and politics in pandemic times
Applying a political economy lens to the recently announced Budget 2022-23, Yamini Aiyar contends that the emphasis on capital expenditure over welfare in the two Budgets announced during the pandemic...
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Yamini Aiyar 
16 February, 2022
- Perspectives
Fixing incentives for power plants to reduce outages
Consumers in India face frequent power outages despite relatively high-quality infrastructure and ample supply of power plants. This article identifies a novel explanation for India’s blackouts: whe...
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Fiona Burlig Akshaya Jha Louis Preonas
- 08 April, 2022
- Articles
Improving public service delivery by fixing payment systems
Fixing how funds flow through the government systems grabs far fewer headlines than malnutrition, problems in the education sector, or crumbling infrastructure. In this post, Charity Troyer Moore cont...
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Charity Troyer Moore
- 28 January, 2022
- Perspectives
The digital dream: Upskilling India for the future
While the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the pace at which technology is becoming commonplace in our lives, it has also exposed a stark digital divide, leaving a large proportion of India’s popul...
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Venugopal Mothkoor Fatima Mumtaz
- 23 March, 2021
- Perspectives
When criminality begets crime: The role of elected politicians
The criminalisation of politics has become a massive threat to society. While the impact of criminally accused leaders on economic outcomes has been studied in the literature, little is known about th...
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Nishith Prakash Soham Sahoo Deepak Saraswat Reetika Sindhi
- 19 March, 2021
- Perspectives
Regionalist party representation and tribal insecurity
Observers have long been ambivalent about regionalism as a principle underlying the organisation of politics. Analysing data from India, this article shows that when regionalist parties win elections,...
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Sacha Kapoor Arvind Magesan
- 19 February, 2021
- Articles
Combating corruption and illicit outflows: A welfare-oriented approach
A discussion of the association between corruption in economies and leakage through illicit outward flows – with important implications for welfare – is missing in the literature. Based on a theor...
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Swapnendu Banerjee Siddhartha Mitra Vivekananda Mukherjee
- 17 December, 2020
- Articles
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 whic...
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Karn Satyarthi
- 15 December, 2020
- Notes from the Field
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 theore...
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Sugata Ghosh Anirban Mitra
- 07 December, 2020
- Articles
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 ...
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Naveen Bharathi Deepak Malghan Sumit Mishra Andaleeb Rahman
- 23 November, 2020
- Articles
Does the right to vote affect political behaviour? Historical evidence from India
Democracies are known to have better economic development outcomes over the longer run. However, it is not clear whether giving citizens the right to vote is sufficient for ensuring an effective degre...
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Guilhem Cassan Lakshmi Iyer Rinchan Ali Mirza
- 17 November, 2020
- Articles
Digging for dirt: Rent-seeking among elected politicians in India’s mineral belt
The Indian mining industry is no stranger to corruption scandals and every year dozens of environmental activists are murdered for exposing illegal mining activities. This article discusses the impact...
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Samuel Asher Paul Novosad
- 10 November, 2020
- Articles
DUET: Decentralise employment generation to urban local bodies
Dilip Mookherjee supports Drèze’s suggestion to decentralise employment generation to urban local bodies, and contends that the moribund nature of urban local government is a key reason for the neg...
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Dilip Mookherjee
- 14 September, 2020
- Perspectives
Synchronised elections, voter behaviour, and governance outcomes
An active policy proposal of the Government of India is to hold national elections at the same time as the assembly elections of all the states. This article examines whether holding national and stat...
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Vimal Balasubramaniam Sabyasachi Das Apurav Yash Bhatiya
- 28 August, 2020
- Articles
Citizen-State relations: Countryside and city
To what extent do citizens expect officials to respond to local problems, and how do they make demands on the State to advance their well-being? Based on surveys in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, this ...
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Adam Auerbach Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner
- 24 August, 2020
- Articles
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Governance Posts
Unique Health Identification and Aadhaar: A case for mandatory linkage
As part of the Digital India initiative, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) issues a Unique Health Identification (UHID) number to each patient, which documents their entire journey in th...
- Mudit Kapoor
- 23 December, 2016
- Perspectives
Caste dominance in rural India: Cause and effect
Rural India remains a caste-based society. This column explores why caste continues to play such an important role and what the effects are. It argues that trade and agricultural productivity suffer, ...
- Siwan Anderson
- 16 August, 2012
- Articles
Rethinking cadre allocation procedures in civil services
The allocation procedure of All-India Services’ officers to states is an important aspect of personnel administration in the public sector. This article shows that a change in allocation policy in 2...
- Ashutosh Thakur
- 18 March, 2019
- Articles