04 September, 2025Kerala’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
Time poverty for girls: Implications for educational attainment and workforce participation
In the fifth post of I4I’s month-long campaign to mark International Women’s Day 2023, Priyadarshini et al. leverage time use data from a study in Bihar, and find that girls take on a majority of ...
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Shubha Bhattacharya Wendy Cheung Madhu Joshi Anamika Priyadarshini
- 14 March, 2023
- Articles
Understanding intergenerational educational mobility with conflicting evidence
There is a growing literature on intergenerational educational mobility that explores how parental education influences the educational attainment of children. This article compares three empirical mo...
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Md Nazmul Ahsan M. Shahe Emran Hanchen Jiang Orla Murphy Forhad Shilpi
- 03 March, 2023
- Articles
Is open defecation still prevalent in rural north India?
In an attempt to understand open defecation in four focus states in the aftermath of the Swachh Bharat Mission, Vyas and Gupta evaluate the findings of the NFHS-5. They note that the NFHS is likely to...
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Aashish Gupta Sangita Vyas
- 20 January, 2023
- Articles
Phone-based assessment data: Triangulating schools’ learning outcomes
Recent research has shown that schools often report overestimated learning outcomes, as they fear adverse consequences if they report poor performance. In this post, Gupta et al. describe a pilot stud...
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Rahul Ahluwalia Vaani Chopra Niharika Gupta Saloni Gupta Azeem Panjwani Kumar Satyam Prakhar Singh
- 11 January, 2023
- Articles
Credit cooperatives: Promoting worker well-being during crises?
Research shows that access to alternative credit mechanisms during the pandemic enabled informal women workers to gain financial security, benefitting their mental well-being in the process. Based on ...
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Devika Oberai
- 06 January, 2023
- Perspectives
India’s early years mathematics curriculum: Continuity, discontinuity and progression
Research has shown the importance of building strong foundations for learning, as the development of cognitive skills in preschool and early primary years is predictive of later mathematical achieveme...
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Benjamin Alcott Suman Bhattacharjea Caroline Dyer Aashna Khurana Purnima Ramanujan
- 02 January, 2023
- Articles
Challenges in access to secondary education in India
India’s latest National Education Policy has envisaged universal access to education by 2030. However, while enrolment is high in elementary schools, access to and uptake of secondary education has ...
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Mridusmita Bordoloi Sharad Pandey
- 09 November, 2022
- Perspectives
Tracking learning outcomes: ASER’s work through the pandemic
With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated lockdowns, schools quickly pivoted to online learning. However, there was limited information about whether children had access to learning m...
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Rukmini Banerji Wilima Wadhwa
- 31 October, 2022
- Videos
Tracking learning outcomes: ASER’s work through the pandemic
With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated lockdowns, schools quickly pivoted to online learning. However, there was limited information about whether children had access to learning m...
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Rukmini Banerji Wilima Wadhwa
- 31 October, 2022
- Podcasts
Insuring India: PM-JAY’s targeting problem
India’s largest health insurance programme is targetted at poor and vulnerable populations who would be least able to afford medical care. However, this article by Chhabra and Smith shows that a lar...
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Sheena Chhabra Owen Smith
- 19 October, 2022
- Articles
The future of old times
India needs to plan for a radical expansion of public support for the elderly. In this piece, Drèze and Duflo argue that near-universal social security pensions would be a good start. Elderly persons...
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Jean Drèze Esther Duflo
- 26 September, 2022
- Perspectives
High scoring but poor: The misallocation of talent in higher education
As labour market returns to college education have increased, more young adults now receive some form of higher education than ever before. Yet, college attendance remains low for children from poor s...
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Andres Yi Chang Jishnu Das Abhijeet Singh
- 08 September, 2022
- Articles
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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