21 May, 2025What is behind the recent rise in women’s workforce participation?
Women’s workforce participation in India increased from 32% in 2022-23 to 37% in 2023-24, with the rise concentrated in rural areas. This article demonstrates that this significant change may be dri...
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Priyanshi Chaudhary Avanindra Nath Thakur 
13 May, 2025
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Can conversations about minorities reduce discrimination? Evidence from anti-transgender discrimination in Chennai
Discriminatory behaviour is known to adversely impact equity and efficiency in a range of economic and social domains. In the context of discrimination against transgender people in urban Chennai, thi...
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Duncan Webb
- 19 July, 2024
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How class and caste influence school choice
Families' socioeconomic status impacts how parents make decisions regarding their children's education. Taking into account the interplay of caste and class, this paper finds that when families are to...
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Combating gender imbalance through legislation
The rapid decline in the sex ratio in India over the past few decades is an artefact of the historically strong preference for sons over daughters. To address the problem, the Indian government passed...
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Anil Deolalikar Arindam Nandi
- 16 August, 2013
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The power of women's political voice
With more women in power, can India’s women expect to see a fall in violent crime committed against them? This column looks at the effect of a law to mandate minimum numbers for women in public offi...
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Lakshmi Iyer Anandi Mani
- 17 June, 2013
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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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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