The distributional consequences of political reservations
This article identifies and attempts to fill in the gaps in understanding the effects of reservations for Scheduled Castes (SCs) in Panchayats. Using data from a state-wide census, multiple administra...
- Chinmaya Kumar M.R. Sharan
- 28 November, 2023
- Articles
Caste-based differences in self-help groups: Evidence from a rural livelihood programme
The National Rural Livelihood Mission aims to increase income and improve wellbeing for rural households. Using survey data from nine states in India, this article analyses the existence of caste-base...
- Chandan Jain Krishna Kejriwal Ritwik Sarkar Pooja Sengupta
- 05 August, 2022
- Articles
India’s Women’s Reservation Act: A big win for governance and beyond
Amidst debates about the recently passed women's reservation act and whether it will reduce gender disparities on the ground, Wattal and Gopalan summarise evidence from a number of randomised evaluati...
- Akshara Gopalan Urvashi Wattal
- 15 December, 2023
- Perspectives
Role model effects? Women's political participation in India
Women’s political candidacy in India is very low and appears to be an important barrier to their representation in government. Does a deficiency of female role models hold back women’s candidacy?...
- Sonia Bhalotra Irma Clots-Figueras Lakshmi Iyer
- 14 September, 2015
- Articles
Property rights, household conflict and suicide in India
Suicide has become the second leading cause of death among young Indians. This column finds that improved inheritance rights for women are associated with an increase in the incidence of suicide amon...
- Siwan Anderson Garance Genicot
- 09 July, 2015
- Articles
Religion and health in early childhood: Evidence from South Asia
The widespread malnutrition of children in South Asia is persistent and troubling. Given the importance of religion in the region, this column examines the relationship between inequalities in child ...
- Elizabeth Brainerd Nidhiya Menon
- 03 July, 2015
- Articles
Women's empowerment and child malnutrition in rural India
Research has found mother’s empowerment to have a positive impact on the nutrition status of their children. This column analyses this relationship for data from rural India for the period 1992-200...
- Samuel Annim Raghav Gaiha Katsushi Imai Veena S. Kulkarni
- 19 June, 2015
- Articles
Women's economic empowerment and domestic violence
The safety of women in India – both inside and outside homes – is a major concern. This column explores the link between women’s economic empowerment, in the form of stronger inheritance rights...
- Aparna Mathur
- 13 March, 2015
- Articles
Impact of the two-child limit for local politicians
Some Indian states debar individuals with more than two children from contesting local elections. This column finds that while the law has significantly reduced fertility among the general population...
- S Anukriti Abhishek Chakravarty
- 02 March, 2015
- Articles
Enhancing women's participation in water governance
Women’s participation has become a key theme in water and sanitation projects. However, projects that have made provisions for women’s participation have yielded mixed results in terms of the qua...
- Priyam Das
- 25 February, 2015
- Articles
Women leaders and deceptive behaviour
Are women in leadership positions more dishonest than men? Based on an artefactual field experiment in rural Bihar, this column finds that women in leadership positions deceive more than men, especia...
- Lata Gangadharan Tarun Jain Pushkar Maitra Joseph Vecci
- 29 January, 2015
- Articles
Does affirmative action reduce productivity? The case of Indian Railways
Critics of job reservations argue that such policies have an adverse effect on work efficiency and productivity. This column analyses the effect of job reservations in the Indian Railways – the wor...
- Ashwini Deshpande Thomas Weisskopf
- 21 January, 2015
- Articles
Social Justice in Education: Are School Uniform and Scholarship Schemes Marred with Discrimination in Bihar?
This project evaluated on how well the attendance conditionality is being implemented in the schools of Bihar, and whether it’s marred with caste-based discrimination. The study found that the atte...
- Abhimanyu Gahlaut Chinmaya Kumar Pankaj Verma
- 31 December, 2014
- IGC Research on India
Keeping women safe
Since the December 2012 rape incident in Delhi, numerous policies have been proposed to stop the “war on women”. In this article, Rohini Pande discusses economic research, including her own, on t...
- Rohini Pande
- 24 December, 2014
- Perspectives
Do awareness programmes on TV help change prejudices?
Awareness-based TV programmes, such as Satya Mev Jayate hosted by Bollywood film personality Aamir Khan, aim to change deep-seated prejudices of the society. To what extent do such programmes influenc...
- Ritwik Banerjee Nabanita Datta Gupta
- 24 November, 2014
- Articles
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A division of labourers: Caste identity and efficiency in India
Castes in India are closely associated with certain occupations and determine the jobs done by millions. This study uses a new dataset to show that a large proportion of workers still work in their ca...
- Guilhem Cassan Daniel Keniston Tatjana Kleineberg
- 18 November, 2022
- Articles
Sex ratios and religion in India and South Asia
In South Asia, low child sex ratios are increasingly an isolated Indian phenomenon. Within India, child sex ratios are ‘normal’ among Christians and Muslims but much lower among Hindus, Sikhs, and...
- Swati Narayan
- 03 April, 2019
- Articles
Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials in India: An update
Building on past research, Saswata Ghosh and Pallabi Das estimate the state- and district-level fertility differentials between Hindus and Muslims using data from the latest round of the NFHS. They sh...
- Pallabi Das Saswata Ghosh
- 18 April, 2023
- Articles