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Governance

Private returns to bureaucratic appointments: Evidence from financial disclosures in India

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Do value-added taxes benefit firms? Evidence from the adoption of state-specific value-added taxes

Value-added tax (VAT) systems have grown popular in the last 30 years, especially among developing countries looking for ways to raise tax revenue efficiently. Using 2000-2012 data on product, state-s...

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Does going cashless make you tax-rich? Evidence from India’s demonetisation

During 2014-2017, the share of adults using electronic payments in the developing world increased by over a third, and policymakers have expressed optimism regarding the role of this trend in promotin...

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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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Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana: Issues and gaps in service delivery and access

The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana is a much-needed and purposeful scheme, given the health hazards faced by women inside households as 79% of rural Indian households still depend on traditional unclea...

  • Perspectives

Do politicians receive special treatment in courts?

Do Members of Legislative Assemblies (MLAs) facing pending criminal cases receive favourable treatment in the Indian legal system? This article uncovers opposite effects of winning office, depending o...

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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 ...

  • Notes from the Field

How democratic are the states of India?

India is often credited for its success as the world’s largest democracy – but does the degree of democracy vary across Indian states? This article develops an index to map the development of subn...

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Political alignment and economic outcomes: Evidence from legislative assembly elections in India

Theory suggests better economic outcomes prevail when providers at different levels of government are politically aligned. While politicians are jointly responsible for several policies, other policie...

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Ujjwala 2.0: What should be done next?

Stopping the use of wood and other solid fuels for cooking and other household uses is crucial to mitigating air pollution and its staggeringly high health impacts in India. In 2016, the government an...

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Using mobiles to improve governance

Measuring how well major public programmes are implemented remains a core governance challenge. With the increasing mobile-phone penetration in the country, Muralidharan, Niehaus, Sukhtankar, and Weav...

  • Perspectives

India’s emerging crisis of representation

Article 81 of the Indian Constitution requires that each state receive Lok Sabha seats in proportion to its population and allocate those seats to constituencies of roughly equal size. However, the ch...

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Power to the people: The impact of political report cards in India

How do Indian voters react to information on the qualifications and performance of politicians?

  • Podcasts

Criminal politicians and informed voting in India

In India, 9% of legislators face criminal charges. Could voter information and coordination improve the country’s political representation?

  • Podcasts

Curbing leakage in public programmes: Evidence from Direct Benefit Transfer policy for LPG subsidies

Many developing countries subsidise access to essential commodities with in-kind transfer programmes, where beneficiaries receive goods at subsidised prices while non-beneficiaries have to pay the mar...

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Do roads bring votes in rural India?

A large-scale rural roads programme in India has provided access to over two-third of villages that lacked a paved road in 2001. Do citizens reward incumbent governments electorally for these improvem...

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Most 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...

  • 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, ...

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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...

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