30 March, 2023The 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...
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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...
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Chandan Jain Krishna Kejriwal Ritwik Sarkar Pooja Sengupta
- 05 August, 2022
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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...
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Akshara Gopalan Urvashi Wattal
- 15 December, 2023
- Perspectives
Did caste-based reservation increase schooling of beneficiaries?
Reservation for backward classes in schools has been in place in India since independence. This column uses a unique historical event that took place in the 1970s in India to evaluate the effect of a...
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Guilhem Cassan
- 16 October, 2014
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Social Identity and Aspirations
The project is a field experiment in India that investigates whether the norms associated with one’s social identity affect one’s aspirations, beliefs, and eventual outcomes. Project exploits cues...
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Priya Mukherjee
- 31 July, 2014
- IGC Research on India
Tell us what you really think: Measuring gender attitudes in Haryana
Changing basic gender attitudes may be crucial for alleviating discrimination against women and improving gender outcomes. This column describes a unique measurement tool developed by social psycholo...
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Diva Dhar Tarun Jain Seema Jayachandran
- 18 July, 2014
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Religion, minority status, and trust
A key factor that drives segmentation in societies is group identities along various dimensions. This column seeks to understand the effects of identity on individual behaviour. Based on an artefactu...
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Minhaj Mahmud Pushkar Maitra Ananta Neelim
- 14 May, 2014
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Quotas and schooling decisions
Affirmative action, as an instrument for bridging inequalities across social groups, has been a contentious issue for decades. This column analyses the impact of reservation in public sector jobs and...
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Gaurav Khanna
- 03 April, 2014
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Do wives care more about household welfare than husbands?
Social science literature shows that women promote household welfare more than men. This column examines if consumption choices of husbands and wives change, depending on whether they have to work to...
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Utteeyo Dasgupta Subha Mani
- 24 February, 2014
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Rape: The shame of a nation
The proliferating number of rape incidents in India is chilling. This column discusses the various perspectives on the causes of rape, and the economic, social and legal factors that play a role in t...
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Chandan Kumar Jha Sudipta Sarangi
- 21 February, 2014
- Articles
Why so few women in politics in India?
Women are severely under-represented in political positions across the world. This column analyses constituency-level election data from Indian states to explore why this is so. It finds that while w...
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Mudit Kapoor Shamika Ravi
- 02 January, 2014
- Articles
How backward are 'Other Backward Classes' in India?
Since reservations were provided in government bodies for lower castes in the early 90s, ‘Other Backward Classes’ have been an important force in Indian politics at all levels. Has there been a c...
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Ashwini Deshpande Rajesh Ramachandran
- 04 December, 2013
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What explains the stagnation of female labour force participation in urban India?
Over the past two decades, urban India has experienced expansion in women’s education, fertility decline and growth in white-collared jobs. Then why is it that female labour force participation has ...
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Stephan Klasen Janneke Pieters
- 27 September, 2013
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Entrepreneurship or survival? Caste and gender of small business in India
Can entrepreneurship be a vehicle for social mobility in India? This column analyses data from micro, small and medium enterprises, and finds clear and persistent caste and gender disparities in virtu...
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Ashwini Deshpande Smriti Sharma
- 23 September, 2013
- Articles
Caste and entrepreneurship in India
It is now widely accepted that the lower castes have risen in Indian politics. Has there been a corresponding change in their entrepreneurial activity? This column seeks to answer this question by ana...
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Lakshmi Iyer Tarun Khanna Ashutosh Varshney
- 26 August, 2013
- Articles
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Social Identity Posts
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
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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
Measuring caste inequality across Indian states
Although recent research on inequality shows that upper castes have the highest levels of material well-being, there is a wide variation in caste inequality across India. Measuring three forms of cast...
- Poulomi Chakrabarti
- 13 September, 2021
- Articles