12 March, 2025Pedalling towards gender equality and empowerment
In Bihar, India and in rural Zambia, the government introduced programmes to address gender gaps in education by providing adolescent girls with bicycles for their commute to school. Discussing the im...
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Vagisha Pandey Sahil Pawar Nishith Prakash 
07 March, 2025
- Articles
Does electrification illuminate women's lives?
A key reason for women’s low labour force participation in developing countries is the burden of unpaid domestic work. Analysing data from rural Bangladesh, this article assesses whether electrifica...
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Tanu Gupta Md. Tajuddin Khan Digvijay S. Negi
- 05 March, 2025
- Articles
The wide-ranging benefits of India’s Public Distribution System
India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) is the world’s largest food transfer programme and India’s most far-reaching social safety net, accounting for 60% of the country’s social assistance b...
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Kathy Baylis Ben Crost Aditya Shrinivas
- 17 February, 2025
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The ‘invisible’ disability of mental illness: Barriers to social security access
Sakshi Sharda writes about the how a lack of clarity on the assessment and diagnosis of mental health and poor implementation of social security schemes increases the vulnerability of those livings wi...
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Sakshi Sharda
- 10 October, 2023
- Perspectives
Making menstrual health a welfare priority: Insights from three states
Public policies on menstrual health have mainly focussed on distributing sanitary napkins to women and girls. However, in this note, Tanya Rana shares some insights gained from conversations with fron...
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Tanya Rana
- 05 October, 2023
- Notes from the Field
How Prayagraj is addressing learning poverty in its Anganwadis
Despite increasing school enrolment rates, learning levels in India remain low. In this note, Agrawal and Kheria describe the efforts being made by the district administration in Prayagraj, Uttar Prad...
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Sarthak Agrawal Utsav Kheria
- 29 September, 2023
- Notes from the Field
Building resilient education systems: Evidence from five countries
With education disrupted due to the Covid-19 pandemic for over a billion children worldwide, this article emphasises the need to create an education system that is resilient and maintains continuity d...
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Naom Angrist et al. (View all)
- 18 September, 2023
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How does a ban on sex-selective abortions affect child health?
Widespread access to sex selection technologies has further skewed the male-biased sex ratio in India. However, this article suggests that the ban on prenatal sex determination may have adverse conseq...
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Aparajita Dasgupta Anisha Sharma
- 31 July, 2023
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Overcoming socio-cultural resistance towards biogas technology
Cultural taboos are often described as an insurmountable barrier to adoption of domestic toilet-linked anaerobic digesters (TLADs). This study provides a better understanding of the socio-cultural res...
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School absences as an early warning system
When children are frequently absent from school, it could be a sign that they are going through adverse personal circumstances. In this note, Anurag Kundu discusses the experience of launching a large...
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Anurag Kundu
- 27 June, 2023
- Notes from the Field
Women empowerment in India: Does colonial history matter?
Examining whether colonial history matters for women’s contemporary economic outcomes in India, this article shows that women who live in areas that were under direct British rule are better off in ...
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Bharti Nandwani Punarjit Roychowdhury
- 22 June, 2023
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Nutritional penalty of motherhood: Can midday meals for children also improve their mothers’ health outcomes?
Midday meals provide a nutritional safety net for children and improve their learning outcomes and attendance. Nikita Sharma argues that spillover benefits might also exist for mothers of the children...
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Nikita Sharma
- 26 May, 2023
- Perspectives
Access to clean drinking water and women’s safety in India
In this study, Sekhri and Hossain use district-level data to find empirical evidence that groundwater scarcity results in an increase in sexual violence against women. They argue that in households wi...
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Md. Amzad Hossain Sheetal Sekhri
- 18 May, 2023
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Foundational learning outcomes: More recovery than loss
Sharing data from the recently released ASER 2022, Wilima Wadhwa discusses the trends in primary school enrollment and learning during the pandemic. Using data collected from Karnataka, Chhattisgarh a...
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Wilima Wadhwa
- 16 May, 2023
- Perspectives
Herself, and her child: Are they worse off due to Covid-19?
Lockdowns imposed to contain the spread of Covid-19 led to loss of employment and income. They also created greater food insecurity, with women and children being more vulnerable to such shocks. In t...
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Mousumi Dutta Saswata Ghosh Zakir Husain
- 11 May, 2023
- Articles
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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