16 December, 2019Criminally 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
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Consent to nothing: Aadhaar-based payment systems in welfare
The process of seeding Aadhaar with bank accounts in order to link welfare schemes and cash transfers with Aadhaar payment systems, created chaos on the ground. In this note, Niklas Wagner and Sakina ...
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Sakina Dhorajiwala Niklas Wagner
- 23 August, 2019
- Notes
How do Indian voters respond to candidates with criminal charges: Evidence from Lok Sabha elections
An alarming number of India’s politicians have criminal records or some charges against them. This column asks how they manage to get away with it. It looks at evidence from parliamentary elections ...
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Bhaskar Dutta Poonam Gupta
- 30 July, 2012
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Indian economy: High performer or Potemkin village?
The recent schizophrenic commentary on the health of the Indian economy raises questions on the true state: Is India doing really well or are we just seeing an impressive facade? In this post, Amartya...
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Amartya Lahiri
- 14 December, 2018
- Perspectives
Are independent candidates unimportant for political representation?
Independent candidates are often deemed ‘frivolous’ or ‘spoilers’ by mainstream political figures and authorities, although there is little to no evidence on their effect on elections. This ar...
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Sacha Kapoor Arvind Magesan
- 03 December, 2018
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Bank and its critics
There has been a lot of commentary in recent weeks on the Reserve Bank of India, around its capital base, performance, and autonomy. In this post, Amartya Lahiri contends that RBI has a more coherent ...
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Amartya Lahiri
- 16 November, 2018
- Perspectives
Promoting women in grassroots governance: Strategies that work
There are more than a million women elected to the Panchayati Raj Institutions of local governance in India. Despite constitutional provisions, women face many barriers when they participate in local ...
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Madhu Joshi
- 14 November, 2018
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Does choice of procurement contract matter for cost and quality of highways?
In the past, infrastructure projects in India have suffered from long delays, massive cost overruns, and poor quality of assets. A widely held belief is that public private partnerships (PPPs) can sol...
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Ram Singh
- 05 November, 2018
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Food subsidy – PDS, cash, or both?
Should food subsidies – currently availed in the form of subsidised cereals – be given out in the form of cash instead? In this post, Krishna and Agrawal contend that rather than asking this binar...
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Tushar Agrawal Anirudh Krishna
- 31 October, 2018
- Perspectives
Anganwadi: A workforce of women with a near-impossible mandate
With a workforce of 1.4 million women, the Anganwadi system forms the backbone of India’s Integrated Child Development Services Scheme – the world’s largest community-based programme for child d...
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G. Ananthapadmanabhan Guruswamy Kavitha Kuruganti
- 26 October, 2018
- Notes
How leader identity impacts group coordination
In principle, leaders can facilitate group coordination towards a common goal but in diverse societies, their effectiveness may depend upon their social identity, and how citizens react to leader iden...
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Irma Clots-Figueras Sonia Bhalotra Lakshmi Iyer Joseph Vecci
- 22 October, 2018
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Heart of darkness: Misplaced priorities of Jharkhand’s District Mineral Foundation
In 2015, the central government launched District Mineral Foundations in the districts affected by mining, which are mandated to collect royalty from all mining activities and use the funds for the we...
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Arindam Banerjee Aditya Ranjan
- 08 October, 2018
- Notes
Do Indian voters mind their representatives getting rich in office?
Asset declarations, requiring politicians to disclose their financial information, are becoming increasingly common across the world. In India, financial declarations are part of public affidavits fil...
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Simon Chauchard S.P. Harish Marko Klašnja
- 10 August, 2018
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How governance and public expenditure impact human development
The state of Madhya Pradesh displays wide variance in human development outcomes across its districts. This article examines the link between public expenditure, quality of governance, and human devel...
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N. R. Bhanumurthy Richa Jain Manish Kumar Prasad
- 01 August, 2018
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Do dishonest people gravitate towards the public sector in India?
The corruption level in the public sector may not only depend on punishments and systems put in place to deter corruption, but also on who chooses to enter the sector. This article finds that people w...
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Rema Hanna Shing-Yi Wang
- 30 July, 2018
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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
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
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