22 July, 2019Escaping the subsidy-quality trap in India’s retail electricity market
Cross-subsidies in retail electricity tariffs leave distribution utilities with neither the incentive nor the capital to improve reliability, particularly for their most subsidised consumers. Using bi...
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Shefali Khanna Kevin Rowe 
19 May, 2021
- Articles
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
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
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...
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Poonam Gupta Arvind Panagariya
- 12 May, 2014
- Articles
Can workfare programmes moderate violence?
It is widely known that income shocks may trigger spurts of violence. This column explores whether workfare programmes can help mitigate support for violent movements. It finds that MNREGA has had a ...
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Thiemo Fetzer
- 05 May, 2014
- Articles
Open defecation in cities: A faltering India story
Despite significant public investment in urban sanitation, over 37 million people in Indian cities resort to open defecation. This column examines the existing information on open defecation in urban...
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Meera Mehta Dinesh Mehta
- 23 April, 2014
- Articles
Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the most dynamic state of them all?
This column analyses the economic performance of 16 major Indian states over the last three decades. It finds that Bihar has improved the most during the 2000s, Kerala has always been a star performe...
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Maitreesh Ghatak Sanchari Roy
- 23 March, 2014
- 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...
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Pushparaj Deshpande
- 17 March, 2014
- Perspectives
Direct Benefits Transfer: An idea whose time has come
About a year ago, the Government of India launched a Direct Benefits Transfer programme that involves transferring government benefits and subsidies directly to residents through a biometric identifi...
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Varad Pande
- 14 March, 2014
- Notes from the Field
Has community monitoring helped reduce corruption in public programme delivery?
MNREGA mandates social audits of public work projects undertaken under the Act in order to empower beneficiaries to scrutinise programme expenditures, and monitor programme delivery. Has community mo...
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Farzana Afridi Vegard Iversen
- 12 March, 2014
- Articles
India's illiberal speech climate
India’s cultural watchdogs and hate speech laws are increasingly seeking to restrict free expression in the country. This article contends that the right to take offence is fundamentally incompatib...
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Parikshit Ghosh
- 05 March, 2014
- Perspectives
Re-conceptualising crime and punishment
A Delhi court has awarded the death penalty to the convicts in the December 2012 gangrape incident. This article discusses the moral basis and dangers of relying on this form of punishment for deterr...
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Pushparaj Deshpande
- 26 February, 2014
- Perspectives
Does the quality of electricity matter?
India is home to almost a quarter of the world population that does not have access to electricity. This column estimates the impact of increased access to and improved quality of electricity on inco...
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Ujjayant Chakravorty Martino Pelli
- 10 February, 2014
- Articles
UID project: Does evidence matter?
The Indian government has been pushing to make UID compulsory, and is now moving towards charging for use of authentication services. This article asserts that the three key selling points of UID –...
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Reetika Khera
- 05 February, 2014
- Perspectives
Religion and relief in Muzzafarnagar
The communal riots that broke out in Muzzafarnagar in the state of Uttar Pradesh in September last year took several lives and left hundreds homeless. In this Note from the Field, Rohini Somanathan s...
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Rohini Somanathan
- 10 January, 2014
- Notes from the Field
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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