24 September, 2025Election of criminal politicians and public service delivery
Why are politicians with criminal records elected to office, despite voters having the option to weed them out? Based on the hypothesis that criminal politicians strategically deliver targeted benefit...
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Abhinav Khemka 
18 September, 2025
- Articles
Boosting Lekhpal performance via data-driven feedback and recognition
The Lekhpals Actionable KPI System for Holistic Assessment and Management (LAKSHYAM) is an initiative to measure and enhance the work performance of Lekhpals, who are frontline functionaries of the Re...
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Fahad Hasin Sakshi Ugale
- 18 August, 2025
- Notes from the Field
Building State capacity for accelerating development through effective governance
In a new edition of I4I conversations, Maitreesh Ghatak (London School of Economics) is joined by Karthik Muralidharan (University of California, San Diego) to discuss his new book, Accelerating India...
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Maitreesh Ghatak Karthik Muralidharan
- 05 May, 2025
- Videos
Local political elite capture and BPL card allocation
There is significant anecdotal evidence for the fact that local political connections at the grassroots level is an important channel through which leakages take place in welfare schemes in India such...
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Sitakanta Panda
- 08 April, 2016
- Articles
Asking the right question to get the right policy
There is consensus in the development community on the importance of bridging the gap between researchers and practitioners; however, misaligned incentives underlie this gap. In this article, Pande, M...
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Eric Dodge Charity Troyer Moore Rohini Pande
- 04 April, 2016
- Perspectives
Is Bihar the new poster boy for PDS reforms?
Food security is a critical issue and Bihar has made remarkable progress over the years. The aim of this project was to document the supply side reforms in Bihar’s PDS and explain why or why not the...
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Aaditya Dar Chinmaya Kumar Pankaj Verma
- 01 April, 2016
- IGC Research on India
How are India's new states faring?
In the year 2000, three new states – Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand – were carved out of the large states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh respectively. This column analyses the...
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Amrita Dhillon Pramila Krishnan Manasa Patnam Carlo Perroni
- 02 March, 2016
- Perspectives
Regulating land markets: The colonial inheritance
State intervention in markets is usually thought of as a post-independence phenomenon. However, this column demonstrates that extensive State intervention in land and credit transactions can be traced...
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Anand Swamy
- 10 February, 2016
- Articles
A conversation on development - II
Parikshit Ghosh (Member of the I4I Editorial Board & Associate Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics) speaks with Kaushik Basu (Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, World Bank and fo...
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Kaushik Basu Parikshit Ghosh
- 03 February, 2016
- Perspectives
How a corruption scam brought MNREGA to a standstill in Nanded
Nanded district in Maharashtra demonstrated exemplary performance in MNREGA until 2012-13, when the exposure of a corruption scam brought the programme to a virtual standstill. In this note, researche...
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Sangita Jadhav Ashwini Kulkarni Aysha Shamsuddin
- 28 January, 2016
- Notes from the Field
Unleashing the full potential of India's 'Open Government Data' initiative
In October 2012, India embarked upon its ‘Open Government Data’ journey, by opening up access to government-owned shareable data in machine-readable formats for the use of general public. In this...
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Natasha Agarwal
- 26 January, 2016
- Perspectives
Access to energy in rural India: A survey of six states
While access to energy is crucial for socioeconomic development, statistically representative surveys on the issue are missing in India. Based on a survey on energy access in six energy-poor states i...
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Chao-yo Cheng Abhishek Jain Johannes Urpelainen
- 18 January, 2016
- Articles
Criminally accused politicians and economic outcomes
Despite a history of widely contested and transparent elections, and presence of vibrant and open media, an increasing number of criminally accused politicians are being elected in India. Based on an...
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Tasneem Ahmed Nishith Prakash Marc Rockmore Yogesh Uppal
- 15 January, 2016
- Articles
Bihar's alcohol ban: Prudent policy or tail-chasing?
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s decision to implement prohibition in the state from 1 April 2016 is based on the rationale that alcohol consumption is the primary reason for violence against wo...
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Sanjeev Kumar Nishith Prakash
- 21 December, 2015
- Perspectives
Intimidation, imitation, economics: Why youth are taking to terror
Men between the ages of 18 and 35 become terrorists, and it is the same demographic that supplies drug dealers, violent criminals, and foot soldiers of political parties. Abhijit Banerjee, Professor ...
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Abhijit Banerjee
- 15 December, 2015
- Perspectives
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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
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...
- Venugopal Mothkoor Fatima Mumtaz
- 23 March, 2021
- Perspectives