16 November, 2023Synchronised elections, voter behaviour, and governance outcomes
An active policy proposal of the Government of India is to hold national elections at the same time as the assembly elections of all the states. This article examines whether holding national and stat...
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Vimal Balasubramaniam Sabyasachi Das Apurav Yash Bhatiya 
28 August, 2020
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Political determinants of newspaper markets in India
Newspapers are an important source of political information for Indian voters. This article looks at how political factors influence the newspaper market. Using the announcement of delimitation in the...
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Julia Cagé Guilhem Cassan Francesca R. Jensenius
- 23 November, 2023
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A proposal for public funding of elections and political parties in India
The Finance Minister of India recently introduced measures aimed at cleaning up political party funding in the country. In this article, Gowda and Santhosh highlight the limitations of these measures,...
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M.V. Rajeev Gowda Varun Santhosh
- 21 April, 2017
- Perspectives
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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Ambuj Sagar Alok Tripathi
- 22 July, 2019
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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...
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Karthik Muralidharan Paul Niehaus Sandip Sukhtankar Jeffrey Weaver
- 26 June, 2019
- 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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Jamie Hintson Milan Vaishnav
- 29 May, 2019
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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?
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Abhijit Banerjee
- 27 May, 2019
- 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?
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Yusuf Neggers
- 23 May, 2019
- 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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Prabhat Barnwal
- 06 May, 2019
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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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Tanushree Goyal
- 26 April, 2019
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Oral democracy
Critical scrutiny of the challenges of electoral democracy including elite capture, corruption, and patronage has led to a revival of the idea of direct democracy – giving power directly to groups o...
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Vijayendra Rao Paromita Sanyal
- 24 April, 2019
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Are transparency and accountability enough? Open corruption and why it exists
While India’s federal anti-corruption ombudsmen have just taken up their work, awareness of the complexity of corruption is growing. This article studies whether highly accountable Indian village co...
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Dahyeon Jeong Ajay Shenoy Laura Zimmermann
- 18 April, 2019
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Should civil servants be allowed to serve in their home areas?
Bureaucrats form an essential part of State capacity. Should they be allowed to serve in their home areas? This article finds that Indian Administrative Service officers assigned to their home states ...
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Marianne Bertrand Robin Burgess Guo Xu
- 08 April, 2019
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Strengthen MNREGS to support the rural economy
India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) has generated a lot of controversy about its effectiveness as a safety net designed to benefit landless rural households. M...
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Karthik Muralidharan Paul Niehaus Sandip Sukhtankar
- 22 March, 2019
- 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...
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Ashutosh Thakur
- 18 March, 2019
- Articles
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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
Why did the Indian economy stagnate under the colonial rule?
How did the Indian economy fare under the colonial rule? Is the average Indian significantly better off after Independence? This column examines trends in GDP per capita in order to determine the stan...
- Aniruddha Bagchi
- 16 September, 2013
- Articles