Kerala’s silent crisis: Educated youth, but locked out of work
Despite performing well in terms of educational access and attainment, the southern state of Kerala exhibits very high rates of youth who are not in education, employment, or training. Based on qualit...
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Isha Gupta
28 August, 2025
- Notes from the Field
When fathers migrate: Does It benefit or disrupt left-behind children’s education?
While studies have explored the impact of male out-migration on left-behind women, there is limited evidence on the effects on children. Analysing data from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, this artic...
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Pintu Paul
04 August, 2025
- Articles
Making vocational training more effective at improving youth employment outcomes
Youth unemployment remains a significant challenge in India, with large-scale public skilling programmes achieving limited success in improving labour-market outcomes. This article explains the approa...
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Evan Borkum
Irina Cheban
Edith Felix
16 July, 2025
- Articles
Network membership and demand for health insurance
Despite being free and having liberal eligibility criteria, the adoption of public health insurance in India remains low. This article examines how informal networks influence adoption behaviour, in t...
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Titir Bhattacharya
Tanika Chakraborty
Anirban Mukherjee
17 January, 2025
- Articles
Powering progress: How reliable community electrification boosts women’s autonomy
While there has been significant progress in expanding access to grid electricity in India, the reliability of electricity remains a concern. Based on five national-level datasets spanning over a peri...
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Rikhia Bhukta
Debayan Pakrashi
Sarani Saha
Ashish Sedai
06 January, 2025
- Articles
Empowering daughters: How conditional cash transfers can shift cultural norms
During the last 30 years, Indian governments have implemented over 20 programmes that reward parents who have daughters and invest in them after birth. Yet, very little is known about these programmes...
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Nabaneeta Biswas
Christopher Cornwell
Laura Zimmermann
18 December, 2024
- Articles
Competitive jobseekers: When sharing less leaves firms at a loss
For efficient matching of jobs and workers in the labour market, it is essential that information on job postings reaches suitable jobseekers. While social networks play a key role in this regard, com...
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Gaurav Chiplunkar
Erin M. Kelley
Gregory Lane
02 December, 2024
- Articles
Street safety and girls’ secondary schooling in India
Street harassment in India is still a constraint on women's education, dimming their future. Analysing the case of ‘SHE teams’ in the state of Telangana, this article shows that the introduction o...
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Kumar Ashutosh
25 November, 2024
- Articles
Contraception as a pathway to better child nutrition and health
India is home to one-third of the world’s stunted children, and half of all under-five mortality can be attributed to undernutrition. Existing literature has shown an association between larger fami...
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Mehreen Mookerjee
Manini Ojha
Sanket Roy
22 November, 2024
- Articles
Moratorium on new subsidies to garner resources for public spending on health
Employability is fundamentally driven by human capital development, encompassing health and education. Based on analysis of data from about 100 economies, Shishir Gupta argues that in India, the lack ...
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Shishir Gupta
23 October, 2024
- Perspectives
Does subsidising publicly provided services discipline markets or distort demand?
Prior research has documented the failure of India’s flagship safe motherhood programme in reducing perinatal mortality, despite substantially increasing the share of mothers delivering at public he...
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Utkarsh Kumar
Parijat Lal
16 August, 2024
- Articles
Did Covid-19 pandemic increase incidence of low-birth-weight among newborns?
Globally, one in four babies are born with low birth weight, with long-term impacts on health and economic outcomes. This article uses Indian data from 2019-2021 to analyse the impact of the Covid-19 ...
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Tim Halliday
Santosh Kumar
09 August, 2024
- Articles
India’s massive employment problem and some ways out
In the recent announcement of India’s Union Budget 2024-25, significant emphasis was placed on the need for job creation. In this post, Pranab Bardhan presents a four-pronged strategy for the sustai...
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Pranab Bardhan
05 August, 2024
- Perspectives
Managing India’s demographic transition
India’s population is expected to peak at about 1.7 billion in 2064, and while the current median age is only 28, the share of Indians aged 65 and above will go from 7% to 20% in the next 40 years o...
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Farzana Afridi
Sonalde Desai
03 July, 2024
- Videos
Managing India’s demographic transition
India’s population is expected to peak at about 1.7 billion in 2064, and while the current median age is only 28, the share of Indians aged 65 and above will go from 7% to 20% in the next 40 years o...
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Farzana Afridi
Sonalde Desai
03 July, 2024
- Podcasts
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Human Development Posts
Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials in India: District-level estimates from Census 2011
The 2011 Indian Census data show a higher growth rate of Muslim population compared to the Hindu population. This article provides an in-depth picture of Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials at the di...
Saswata Ghosh
27 March, 2019
- Articles
Understanding India’s mental health crisis
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, several reports have indicated a worsening of mental health issues among individuals across age groups. In this post, Michele Mary Bernadine examines the stat...
Michele Mary Bernadine
06 April, 2021
- Perspectives
Ten steps to transform the quality of education in India
In this article, Sridhar Rajagopalan, Managing Director of Educational Initiatives, suggests 10 initiatives that can help transform the quality of education in India.
Sridhar Rajagopalan
19 November, 2015
- Perspectives