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Governance

Like father, like son? The economic impacts of political dynasties in India

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Like father, like son? The economic impacts of political dynasties in India

Political dynasties remain ubiquitous in democratic countries even though many societies democratised to end hereditary rule. This article studies how dynastic politics affects economic development in...

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(Un)ease of doing business: How congested courts hinder firm productivity

The strength of contract enforcement determines how firms source inputs and organise production, and hence influences productivity. Using microdata on Indian manufacturing, this article quantifies the...

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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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The Impact of Community Mobilization on Land Rights Governance: Evidence from a Homestead Land Entitlement Initiative in Gaya District of Bihar, India

This project evaluates the impact of a community level program in Gaya district that seeks to establish, train, and mobilize village-level community-based organizations to assist Scheduled Caste house...

  • IGC Research on India

Bidding for Roads

The project looks into the mechanisms of political influence by analyzing whether contractors without political connections are deterred from applying, or whether the evaluation process is biased in f...

  • IGC Research on India

Rural development programmes: Implementation challenges and solutions

With a majority of the population living in rural areas in India, rural development is key to the development of the country. Based on his experience of working closely with the district administratio...

  • Perspectives

Deconstructing the global wave of right-wing populism

At present, there seems to be palpable reaction against ideas of tolerance, minority rights, freedom of expression, and respect for individual autonomy and dignity, in many parts of the world. In thi...

  • Perspectives

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

Do Gram Panchayat leaders favour their own constituencies in MNREGA fund allocation?

Political incentives are known to play a role in the allocation of public resources from upper- to lower-tier governments. This column seeks to examine whether ruling parties in local governments favo...

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Governance performance of Indian states: 2001-02 and 2011-12

Defining governance as service delivery, this column develops a measure of the quality of governance – also adjusting for the impact of the level of development - and provides a ranking of major Ind...

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The devil is in the details: Successes and limitations of bureaucratic reform

To address absenteeism among staff at public healthcare facilities, the government of Karnataka introduced an innovative biometric device to monitor and enforce attendance rules. This column presents ...

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Politician's pain is poor man's gain: Income distribution in close-election constituencies

Studies have highlighted the role of electoral competition in directing the flow of public funds. Analysing data from India, this column finds lower income inequality and polarisation in tightly conte...

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Surrogacy bill: Implications and way forward

Contributing to the ongoing debate on India’s surrogacy bill, Dutta and Sarkar discuss the potential implications of the bill on the country’s billion-dollar surrogacy industry. They contend that ...

  • Perspectives

Improving School Governance at Scale: A Randomized Evaluation of the Madhya Pradesh School Quality Assessment Program

Weak governance is a critical constraint in delivering quality education in developing countries. This project conducts a randomised evaluation of one of the most ambitious recent attempts by a develo...

  • IGC Research on India

Can the female sarpanch deliver? Evidence from Maharashtra

One-third of all seats in village councils are reserved for women. The government has proposed an increase in quota to 50%, and in the period of reservation from five to 10 years. Based on a survey co...

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Divya Ravindranath

Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore

Divya

Divya Varma

Aajeevika Bureau (Ahmedabad)

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Sandip Sukhtankar

University of Virginia

Karthik

Karthik Muralidharan

University of California, San Diego

Paul

Paul Niehaus

University of California, San Diego

Hemant Kumar

Hemant Kumar Pullabhotla

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Ashutosh Thakur

Stanford Graduate School of Business

Chandan Kumar

Chandan Kumar Jha

Le Moyne College

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Most Popular Governance Posts

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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Rural development programmes: Implementation challenges and solutions

With a majority of the population living in rural areas in India, rural development is key to the development of the country. Based on his experience of working closely with the district administratio...

  • Perspectives

Charting a course for the Indian economy

Karthik Muralidharan (Associate Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego) speaks with Arvind Subramanian (Chief Economic Adviser, Government of India) on a broad set of issues rang...

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