Grain subsidies and junk food purchases among low-income individuals
While governments rely on expensive food subsidy programmes to address malnutrition among low-income communities, their impact is unclear as only self-reported data on food purchase decisions are avai...
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Ali Aouad
Kamalini Ramdas
Alp Sungu
23 September, 2024
- Articles
The problem of India’s stagnant real wages
New data from the Labour Bureau and the National Sample Survey Office point to a virtual stagnation of real wages in India over the past decade. In this post, Das and Drèze argue that this trend poin...
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Arindam Das
Jean Drèze
26 July, 2024
- Perspectives
Rethinking social safety nets in a changing society
This paper was coauthored by Debasis Barik, Pallavi Choudhuri, Bijay Chouhan, Om Prakash Sharma, Dinesh Kumar Tiwari (NCAER) and Sharan Sharma (University of Maryland College Park and NCAER). Histori...
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Sonalde Desai
15 July, 2024
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Getting kinky with chickens
In the context of Bill Gates’ commitment to chickens as a high-impact poverty intervention, Chris Blattman recently proposed a study to compare interventions that provide chicken rather than cash, ...
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Lant Pritchett
04 March, 2017
- Perspectives
Income inequality in a globalising world
Since the turn of the century, income inequality has risen to be among the most prominent policy issues of our time. This column looks at inequality trends in recent decades. While relative global in...
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Miguel Niño-Zarazúa
Laurence Roope
Finn Tarp
17 February, 2017
- Articles
The tale and maths of universal basic income
Commenting on the discussion on universal basic income in the recently released Economic Survey, Jean Drèze argues that UBI is an idea whose time will come, but that time is still quite distant as f...
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Jean Drèze
15 February, 2017
- Perspectives
Inequality in the typical country in the last 25 years
While inequality has received a great deal of attention in the public debate in recent times, the poor quality of data available on this issue is a constraint. Based on a recently-compiled database o...
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Jose Cuesta
Christoph Lakner
Mario Negre
Ani Silwal
10 February, 2017
- Articles
Decoding universal basic income for India
In this article, Jean Drèze argues that while universal basic income is a good idea in principle, as far as India today is concerned, it sounds like premature articulation. It could also become a Tr...
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Jean Drèze
20 January, 2017
- Perspectives
A universal basic income to step up economic reform
In this article, Nimai Mehta, Academic Director of the Global Economics and Business Program at the American University, highlights the political challenge of introducing the wider set of reforms nee...
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Nimai Mehta
28 October, 2016
- Perspectives
What do we know about the wealthy in India? A pre-liberalisation analysis
Academic attention on the metamorphosis and concentration of wealth has so far excluded poor countries. This column analyses wealth distribution in India, post-independence and pre-liberalisation. It...
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Rishabh Kumar
26 October, 2016
- Articles
Universal basic income for India
In this article, Vijay Joshi, Emeritus Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford, sets out his proposal for a universal basic income (UBI) in India. He contends that deep fiscal adjustment, in co...
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Vijay Joshi
21 October, 2016
- Perspectives
Poverty reduction in India: Revisiting past debates with 60 years of data
There has been much debate about the poverty impacts of economic growth and structural transformation in developing countries. This column revisits these issues using a newly constructed dataset of p...
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Gaurav Datt
Rinku Murgai
Martin Ravallion
10 October, 2016
- Articles
The universal basic share and social incentives
In the previous article in the series, Debraj Ray proposes a simple amendment of the universal basic income called the universal basic share. In this article, Debraj Ray and Karl Ove Moene (Universit...
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Kalle Moene
Debraj Ray
30 September, 2016
- Perspectives
Minimum standard of living for all Indians
In this article, T.N. Srinivasan, Samuel C. Park, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Economics, Yale University, contends that the idea of an assured minimum income for all citizens of India was being discuss...
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T. N. Srinivasan
30 September, 2016
- Perspectives
The universal basic share
Debraj Ray, Professor of Economics at NYU, proposes a simple amendment of the universal basic income – what he calls the ‘universal basic share’. The idea is to commit a fixed fraction of the g...
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Debraj Ray
29 September, 2016
- Perspectives
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Poverty & Inequality Posts
Wealth inequality, class, and caste in India: 1961-2012
The level of wealth inequality in India is close to that of some highly unequal countries in the world. This article assesses the long-term evolution of wealth inequality in the country for the period...
Nitin Kumar Bharti
28 June, 2019
- Articles
Covid-19: What can be done immediately to help vulnerable population
With over 80% of India’s workforce employed in the informal sector and one-third working as casual labour, Covid-19's spread and subsequent unplanned lockdowns, have created economic havoc in the li...
Reetika Khera
25 March, 2020
- Perspectives
EWS reservation in higher education: Affirmative action or vote bank politics?
The Constitution (103rd Amendment) Act, 2019, provides for 10% reservation for the economically weaker sections (EWS) in higher educational institutions within the general category. In this post, Devi...
Devika Malhotra Sharma
11 September, 2019
- Perspectives