06 June, 2019Lockdown, 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...
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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...
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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...
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Farzana Afridi Amrita Dhillon Sanchari Roy
- 11 May, 2020
- Notes
Big and small ideas in development economics: Theory, evidence and practice
Karthik Muralidharan, Associate Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego speaks with Kaushik Basu, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, World Bank and former Chief Economic A...
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Kaushik Basu Karthik Muralidharan
- 03 February, 2015
- Videos
Financial literacy: When, what and how
The need for financial literacy and its importance for financial inclusion have been widely recognised. Based on various research studies on financial literacy initiatives, this column outlines finan...
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Parul Agarwal
- 05 January, 2015
- Articles
Impact of MNREGA on labour markets
There is an active, ongoing debate on whether MNREGA should be retained in its current form. This column reports on research which suggests that MNREGA increased rural and urban wages and reduced sea...
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Clément Imbert John Papp
- 22 December, 2014
- Articles
Workfare as an effective way to fight poverty: The case of India's MNREGA
The fundamental appeal of a workfare programme, vis-à-vis a welfare programme, is that it helps in targeting the beneficiaries. This column assesses the welfare impact of MNREGA on poor rural househ...
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Shamika Ravi
- 11 December, 2014
- Articles
MNREGA's swan song: Not everyone's idea of achche din
Over the last few months, the central government announced a set of measures to restrict MNREGA. The rationale essentially revolves around corruption in the scheme and lack of economic viability. In ...
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Amitava Gupta
- 14 November, 2014
- Perspectives
(Mis)Leading attack on MNREGA
Bhagwati and Panagariya have argued for phasing out MNREGA in favour of cash transfers. In this article, Abreu et al. contend that the argument is based on inflating the costs of the programme and de...
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Dilip Abreu Pranab Bardhan Maitreesh Ghatak Ashok Kotwal Dilip Mookherjee Debraj Ray
- 12 November, 2014
- Perspectives
Switching to sanitation in South Asia: A study of health technology adoption (a seed study)
Open defecation in rural India presents a puzzle: India has far higher open defecation rates than other developing regions where people are poorer, literacy rates are lower, and water is more scarce.
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Diane Coffey
- 31 October, 2014
- IGC Research on India
A critical assessment of the Rangarajan Panel Report on poverty measurement
An expert committee headed by C Rangarajan was appointed by the government to rethink poverty measurement in India. This column provides a critical assessment of the recently released report of the C...
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Ranjan Ray Kompal Sinha
- 30 October, 2014
- Articles
Is the proposed restructuring of MNREGA desirable?
The rural development ministry plans to restrict MNREGA to the 200 most backward districts, and reduce the wage component of the total expenditure of the programme. In this article, Ashwini Kulkarni ...
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Ashwini Kulkarni
- 20 October, 2014
- Perspectives
The 'urban sprawl' and declining rural-urban inequality
India has experienced rapid urbanisation in the past three decades. Has urbanisation impacted the economic wellbeing of rural and urban workers? This column finds that the rural-urban wage gap has sh...
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Viktoria Hnatkovska Amartya Lahiri
- 29 September, 2014
- Articles
Please weight
The latest wealth index by New World Wealth that looks at multimillionaires has ranked India eighth in the global rich list. This article contends that looking at absolute numbers may be misleading. ...
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Maitreesh Ghatak Debraj Ray
- 05 September, 2014
- Perspectives
Squaring the poverty circle
An expert group headed by C Rangarajan has recommended a poverty measurement methodology for India. In this article, Deaton and Drèze argue that the method proposed by the expert group to set povert...
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Angus Deaton Jean Drèze
- 30 July, 2014
- Perspectives
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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
Aadhaar, biometrics, and the PDS in Jharkhand
Aadhaar-based biometric authentication was made mandatory for obtaining rations under the Public Distribution System in Ranchi district in Jharkhand in August 2016. In this article, Nazar Khalid demon...
- Nazar Khalid
- 10 January, 2018
- Perspectives
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