31 May, 2019Right to Education Act: Trends in enrolment, test scores, and school quality
A decade ago, India joined a range of countries that mandate free, compulsory education for school-aged children. Passed in August 2009, India’s Right to Education Act was potentially transformative...
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Manisha Shah 
12 July, 2019
- Articles
Access to toilets and public safety of women
Launched on 2 October 2014, Swachh Bharat Mission aimed to increase the proportion of rural households with access to a toilet from 38.8% to 100% by 2019. In the run-up to Gandhi Jayanti and the 5th a...
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Kanika Mahajan Sheetal Sekhri
- 01 October, 2019
- Articles
What the Swachh Bharat Mission did not change
On the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and 5th anniversary of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), Coffey and Spears discuss findings from a field survey about changes in open defecation in rura...
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Diane Coffey Dean Spears
- 02 October, 2019
- Perspectives
Promoting excellence in higher education in India
Over the years, the entire system of higher education in India has relentlessly bled talent. In this article, Abhijit Banerjee, Professor of Economics at MIT, discusses why this is so, and what can be...
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Abhijit Banerjee
- 29 March, 2017
- Perspectives
Common tongue? How mother tongue instruction influences education
The recently released draft of the National Education Policy stresses the importance of education in the mother tongue, especially in the formative years at school. This column seeks to uncover the li...
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Tarun Jain Revathy Suryanarayana
- 27 February, 2017
- Perspectives
Leveraging patients' social networks to overcome Tuberculosis under-detection in India: A field experiment
An estimated 3.5 million people in India suffer from Tuberculosis (TB). The disease is under-detected, which is a major challenge because the success of any treatment programme rests crucially on ide...
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Pradeep Chintagunta Jessica Goldberg Mario Macis
- 31 January, 2017
- IGC Research on India
School consolidation in Himachal Pradesh: Achieving quality and inclusion
While the emphasis on neighbourhood schooling in India’s education policy over the past 15 years has increased enrolment, it has also contributed to a proliferation of poor quality, small schools. T...
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Shrikant Wad
- 06 January, 2017
- Perspectives
Peer influence and human capital accumulation: Evidence from Delhi University colleges
College is an important milestone in life that is believed to develop several aspects of an individual's human capital, broadly defined to include both cognitive and socio-emotional traits. Consequen...
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Utteeyo Dasgupta Subha Mani Smriti Sharma Saurabh Singhal
- 07 November, 2016
- Articles
Understaffed, underserved: Human problems of India's public health system
India’s progress in reducing infant and maternal mortality is rather slow. This column shows the extent of shortfall of gynaecologists and auxiliary nurse midwives - the frontline of the battle agai...
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Prateek Mittal Vartika Singh
- 13 October, 2016
- Articles
Whither female disadvantage? An analysis of private school enrolment in India
Given the poor condition of government schools and the perceived efficiency of private schools, Indian parents are increasingly choosing to send their children to private schools. This column examines...
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Pushkar Maitra Sarmistha Pal Anurag Sharma
- 07 October, 2016
- Articles
Using geospatial methods in estimating exposure to open defecation
Eliminating open defecation is an important policy priority in India. In this article, Arya, George and Singh from the Centre for Policy Research, illustrate how using readily available geospatial dat...
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Prashant Arya Nikhil George Amandeep Singh
- 03 August, 2016
- Perspectives
Water quality awareness and behaviour change
Universal access to clean water is far from a reality in many developing countries. This column examines a nationwide information campaign that attempted to minimise the use of arsenic-contaminated tu...
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Pinar Keskin Hannah Ruebeck Gauri Kartini Shastry
- 28 July, 2016
- Articles
Maternity entitlements for healthier babies
The National Food Security Act, 2013 provides for a maternity benefit of not less than Rs. 6,000 for every pregnant and lactating mother in India. In this article, Coffey and Hathi explain why materni...
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Diane Coffey Payal Hathi
- 07 July, 2016
- Perspectives
The growing problem of excess weight in India
The Indian population is increasingly becoming overweight or obese, and this phenomenon is likely to impose a considerable health burden in the future. Analysing data from the Indian Human Development...
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Pushkar Maitra Nidhiya Menon
- 27 June, 2016
- Articles
Ensuring access to medicines through PPPs
To address the issue of low access to basic medicines by the general public, the state government of West Bengal introduced Fair Price Medicine Shops in secondary and tertiary hospitals through a Publ...
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Satarupa Bandyopadhyay Arijita Dutta
- 24 June, 2016
- Articles
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Human Development Posts
Giving up too early on malnourished children? Catch-up growth and Midday Meals
It is widely believed that malnourishment in the first few years of childhood adversely affects cognition and adult economic outcomes. This column presents new research which shows that full recovery...
- Abhijeet Singh
- 14 April, 2014
- Articles
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
A quiet revolution: The case of primary education in Uttar Pradesh
The challenge in India’s school education system today is how to translate years of schooling into learning. While there is reason to lament the learning crisis, a quiet movement is taking place in ...
- Shobhini Mukerji
- 31 May, 2019
- Notes