Poverty & Inequality

Lockdown, life, and livelihood in the times of Corona

After around 36 hours of the lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in India, the Finance Minister announced a slew of welfare measures amounting to Rs. 1.7 trillion to support the vulnerable popu...

Arjun Kumar Balwant Singh Mehta Simi Mehta
07 April, 2020

Perspectives

Balancing corruption and exclusion: Incorporating Aadhaar into PDS

How should recipients of publicly provided goods and services prove their identity in order to access these benefits? This article reports findings from a large-scale experiment across 15 million bene...

Karthik Muralidharan Paul Niehaus Sandip Sukhtankar
17 April, 2020

Articles

How has Covid-19 crisis affected urban poor? Findings from a phone survey - II

While several commentators have highlighted the plight of migrants due to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, less is known about how low-income families living in urban shanty towns are faring. Afridi et al...

Farzana Afridi Amrita Dhillon Sanchari Roy
11 May, 2020

Notes from the Field

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Covid-19 relief: Are women Jan Dhan accounts the right choice for cash transfers?

While the relief package announced by the Government of India for Covid-19 rightly complements food rations with cash transfers, the case for using the list of women Jan Dhan bank accounts for the lat...

Anmol Somanchi
22 May, 2020

Perspectives

Covid-19: A tailor’s tale

This note presents a narrative that is based on an interview conducted on 15 April with a tailor who walked most of the way from Jaipur to his home in Farrukhabad district in Uttar Pradesh, after the ...

Bhavishya Mehta Rohini Somanathan
12 May, 2020

Notes from the Field

How has Covid-19 crisis affected urban poor? Findings from a phone survey - II

Farzana Afridi Amrita Dhillon Sanchari Roy
11 May, 2020

Notes from the Field

Webinar: Impact of Covid-19 on informal and migrant workers in India

The International Growth Centre (IGC), in collaboration with I4I, organised a Webinar on 'The impact of Covid-19 on informal and migrant workers in India', with Jean Drèze (Ranchi University), Farzan...

Farzana Afridi Jean Drèze Purnima Menon Shahid Vaziralli
11 May, 2020

Perspectives

How has Covid-19 crisis affected the urban poor? Findings from a phone survey - I

Farzana Afridi Amrita Dhillon Sanchari Roy
23 April, 2020

Notes from the Field

Balancing corruption and exclusion: Incorporating Aadhaar into PDS

Karthik Muralidharan Paul Niehaus Sandip Sukhtankar
17 April, 2020

Articles

Lockdown, life, and livelihood in the times of Corona

Arjun Kumar Balwant Singh Mehta Simi Mehta
07 April, 2020

Perspectives

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

Populism: Why in rich countries and in good times

Economic anxiety and insecurity are often cited as drivers of populism, so why has populism emerged over the past few years in rich countries and in good times? This article argues that when the econo...

Lubos Pastor Pietro Veronesi
26 February, 2020

Articles

What is happening to rural welfare, poverty, and inequality in India?

An analysis of the draft National Statistical Office report that the Government has decided not to put out shows a deterioration in 2017-18 in consumption and poverty levels in rural India. The reason...

S. Subramanian
10 January, 2020

Articles

Economic mobility in India: Estimation using ‘noisy’ data

There has been a dramatic rise in inequality in India post-liberalisation. This article finds economic mobility to be markedly low, with at least seven out of 10 poor households remaining poor or at-r...

Hao Li Daniel L. Millimet Punarjit Roychowdhury
18 September, 2019

Articles

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...