29 September, 2025Protecting girls at school: How sanitation infrastructure can reduce sexual violence
Over 30% of reported rape cases in India involve victims under 18, with girls particularly at risk. One key factor that exposes females to harm is the lack of adequate sanitation facilities. This arti...
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Pei Gao Aditi Kothari Yu-Hsiang Lei 
29 July, 2025
- Articles
How MNREGA reduced women’s labour force participation
By guaranteeing 100 workdays annually per household in rural India, MNREGA seeks to enhance economic security and alleviate poverty. This article shows that while the programme has successfully achiev...
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Jorge Luis García
- 18 July, 2025
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Raising the value of women’s time for a transition to clean fuels
A majority of women in rural India continue to use traditional fuels, adding to the time that they devote to domestic work. In this post, Farzana Afridi discusses findings from a survey in Madhya Prad...
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Farzana Afridi
- 04 June, 2025
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Holy wars: Temple desecrations in medieval India
The rise of extremist groups such as the Taliban and the Islamic State, and their destruction of religious relics, have led some to magnify the presence of religious bigotry in Islamic societies. Usi...
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Sriya Iyer Anand Shrivastava Rohit Ticku
- 27 March, 2017
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Getting India's women into the workforce: Time for a smart approach
In this article, Rohini Pande, the Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, contends that raising India’s stubbornly low rate of female labour force participation will r...
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Rohini Pande
- 10 March, 2017
- Perspectives
Women and work in Asia: Insights for India's low female labour force participation
In this article, Sher Singh Verick, Deputy Director, ILO’s Decent Work Team for South Asia and Country Office for India, shows how India compares with other countries in Asia as well as with other ...
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Sher Singh Verick
- 08 March, 2017
- Perspectives
Declining female labour force participation in rural India: The demand side
National Sample Survey data shows a decline in rural women’s workforce participation between 2004-05 and 2011-12. Rising rural incomes and women’s education over the same period have been taken a...
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Sonalde Desai
- 07 March, 2017
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Declining female labour force participation in rural India: The supply side
Analysis of National Sample Survey data shows that low rates of female labour force participation in India are concentrated among married women in rural areas. This column suggests that this is partl...
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Farzana Afridi Taryn Dinkelman Kanika Mahajan
- 05 March, 2017
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Introduction to e-Symposium: Women and work in India
Female labour force participation in India has been low and stagnant over the past few decades. I4I Editor Farzana Afridi is hosting an e-symposium to examine research that explores the reasons for t...
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Farzana Afridi
- 03 March, 2017
- Symposium
What explains the low and stagnating female labour force participation in India?
In this article, Stephan Klasen gives an overview of the existing evidence on the supply- and demand-side drivers of female labour force participation in India.
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Stephan Klasen
- 03 March, 2017
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The battle for backwardness
Ahead of the assembly elections in Punjab, the state government granted ‘Other Backward Classes’ status to Rajput Sikhs. In this article, Rohini Somanathan contends that caste reservations first ...
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Rohini Somanathan
- 22 February, 2017
- Perspectives
Women's empowerment and changing social norms: Persistent effects of a one-time targeted in-kind transfer in India
The project explored how a targeted social reform - the “Cycle program” in Bihar - affected the aspirations and behaviour of young women. The Cycle program was successful in increasing enrolment i...
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Shabana Mitra Kalle Moene
- 27 January, 2017
- IGC Research on India
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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Urmila Chatterjee Rinku Murgai Martin Rama
- 13 January, 2017
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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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Rossella Calvi
- 19 September, 2016
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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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Sarah Khan
- 01 July, 2016
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost 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...
- Pallabi Das Saswata Ghosh
- 18 April, 2023
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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
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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