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International Women’s Day 2025: Towards equality and empowerment

Throughout this week, I4I has been sharing some of the latest evidence and ideas around women’s empowerment to mark International Women’s Day 2025. Discover the five-part series, and more about I4...

  • Symposium

Defensive cooperation: Understanding pro-social attitudes in Indian Muslims

Mainstream theories of development predict greater willingness to contribute to public goods in more homogeneous settings. This article reports findings from a study in Delhi slums to assess how Hindu...

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Affirmative action in credit markets: Can it enhance minorities’ welfare?

In 2009, as part of a Government of India programme to improve the welfare of religious minorities, commercial banks were directed to increase credit to these groups. This article finds that the polic...

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What explains the decline in female labour force participation in India?

It is often argued that female labour force participation is declining in India due to rising incomes that allow more women to stay at home, which is the preferred household choice in a predominantly...

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Why are older women missing in India? The age profile of bargaining power and poverty

The ratio of women to men is particularly low in India relative to developed countries. It has recently been argued that close to half of these ‘missing’ women are of post-reproductive ages. What...

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Courting women's votes: What does this mean for women?

In the recent state assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, political parties targeted women voters with specific handouts and proposed policies such as alcohol bans. This column contends that while the in...

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Women and the Indian job market: Glass ceiling or sticky floor?

The gender wage gap among regular wage and salaried workers in India was 49% in 2009-10. This column finds the bulk of the gap is due to discrimination against women in the job market, rather than di...

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The right to shelter: An evaluation of the land transfer programme to Mahadalits in Bihar

This project follows the implementation of a land distribution scheme towards Mahadalit households in Bihar, the most oppressed of the Scheduled Castes in the state. It aims to describe which Mahadali...

  • IGC Research on India

Caste quotas in politics and development outcomes

To guarantee the political inclusion of the historically marginalised groups, electoral quotas have been in place for them in India since 1950. Analysing the constituency-level impact of quotas for S...

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Maternal mortality and gender prejudice

While maternal mortality has fallen sharply in the last decade, it remains unnecessarily high at about 800 deaths a day worldwide. Moreover, there is enormous variation in levels and rates of decline ...

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How has land acquisition impacted dalits? A case study from Maharashtra

Land ownership in Indian villages is inextricably linked to caste, with dalits owing little or no land. Based on a survey in Maharashtra, this column assesses the impact of land acquisition and subse...

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Missing unmarried women

The developing world has notoriously low sex ratios, a phenomenon that has been described as ‘missing women’. This is believed to be driven by parental preferences for sons, sex-selective abortion...

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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?...

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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...

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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 ...

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Recent Contributors

Nandana

Nandana Sengupta

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Swati

Swati Sharma

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Priyanshi

Priyanshi Chaudhary

O.P. Jindal Global University

Avanindra Nath

Avanindra Nath Thakur

O.P. Jindal Global University

Karan

Karan Bhasin

University at Albany, SUNY

Surjit

Surjit Bhalla

International Monetary Fund

Tirthatanmoy

Tirthatanmoy Das

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

I4I

I4I Team

Ideas for India

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Most Popular Social Identity Posts

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...

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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...

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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...

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