08 May, 2025Lighting the path to learning: Can electricity boost children’s test scores?
When households gain access to electricity, children are more likely to be enrolled in school. But do they also perform better? Based on West Bengal’s universal household electrification programme a...
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Somdeep Chatterjee Shiv Hastawala Jai Kamal 
23 April, 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
- 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
Child malnutrition in India and what can be done about it
While many things are getting better in India, the disturbing levels of child malnutrition are hardly changing. This column explores why and asks what can be done. It calls for more conditional cash t...
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Pushkar Maitra Anu Rammohan
- 15 October, 2012
- Articles
Why Indian education needs to get back to reality
What is the best advice to give an Indian education department official? This column argues that the best thing officials can do is drop the assumptions and stick to reality – otherwise many childre...
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Rukmini Banerji
- 12 October, 2012
- Articles
Child malnutrition: Why wealth isn't the only problem
Why does child malnutrition persist in India? This column argues that the reason is not limited to poverty or inadequate access to food; but that a lack of knowledge about healthy nutrition plays a vi...
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Nisha Malhotra
- 08 October, 2012
- Articles
How to keep more girls in school? Lessons from Bangladesh
For years developing countries have been trying to increase parents’ incentives to send their children, particularly girls, to school and keep them there. This column looks at the success of Banglad...
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Mushfiq Mobarak
- 24 September, 2012
- Articles
Education in Bihar: Still a long road ahead
In the north Indian state of Bihar, education has been improving faster than in the rest of the country. But as this column reminds us, Bihar is starting from the bottom. For education to continue to ...
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Nishith Prakash
- 07 September, 2012
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Misguided policy and school inequality in rural India
Despite government efforts, stark inequality in India’s schools persists, particularly in rural areas. This column argues that the failure may lie in policy design – rather than helping the worst ...
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Anjini Kochar
- 18 August, 2012
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Food for thought: On the design of school subsidy programmes
Despite significant increase in primary school enrollments, student attendance rates are less than 70% in public schools. This column argues that India needs to start evaluating its existing school su...
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Farzana Afridi
- 06 August, 2012
- Articles
Learning and Earning: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in India
This project estimates the short-and-medium-run effects of participating in a subsidised vocational training programme aimed at improving labour market outcomes of women residing in low-income househo...
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Pushkar Maitra Subha Mani
- 01 July, 2012
- IGC Research on India
The Enigma of Malnutrition in India
This project uses data from 2004 to 2014 for 26 countries to make comparisons between South Asia and Africa, examining how the regional gap in child malnutrition varies with demographic and other char...
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Seema Jayachandran Rohini Pande
- 01 July, 2012
- IGC Research on India
Women's Reservations in Bihar and Children's Health Outcomes
This project investigates the impact of political decentralization and gender quota in local governance on different measures of health outcomes and behaviors. The findings of the prioject are consist...
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Santosh Kumar Nishith Prakash
- 01 June, 2012
- IGC Research on India
Public versus Private College Education in Developing Countries: Economic ans Social Implications in India
Tertiary education has fuelled the economic growth in India in recent times. This has in turn generated excess demand for a highly educated and skilled workforce.
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Sheetal Sekhri
- 01 April, 2012
- IGC Research on India
Cognitive Effects of Supplementary School Feeding Programme
This project uses the exogenous policy shock of the extension of provision of school meals to upper primary grades in public schools in Delhi to study the effects of school meal intake on the cognitiv...
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Farzana Afridi Bidisha Barooah Rohini Somanathan
- 01 April, 2012
- IGC Research on India
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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