10 March, 2025International 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...
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I4I Team 
08 March, 2025
- 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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Melani Cammett Poulomi Chakrabarti David Romney
- 14 October, 2024
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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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S. K. Ritadhi Muhammad Yasir Khan
- 27 August, 2024
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Casteism and corruption: Beyond political correctness
Sociologist Ashis Nandy’s recent remark that most corrupt people belong to lower castes drew a lot of flak. In this column, Pranab Bardhan shares his views on what he considers to be the two substan...
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Pranab Bardhan
- 12 April, 2013
- Perspectives
Saving Behaviour in India: Understanding the differences across castes
The past three decades in India have witnessed a sharp reduction in the historically large gaps in the education levels, occupation choices and wages of the backward castes relative to the rest of the...
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Viktoria Hnatkovska Amartya Lahiri
- 01 March, 2013
- IGC Research on India
Does mother's status affect the child's stature?
Both women’s status and children’s health in South Asia are abysmal. Can a well-defined link be established from women’s status to child health? This column presents results of a study that uses...
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Diane Coffey
- 22 February, 2013
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Violence against married women in India: Can the data tell us anything?
Violence against women in India has recently been brought to the world’s attention. But for too long the problem has been under reported. This column looks at what the data can tell us.
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Sreeparna Ghosh
- 11 February, 2013
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Infant mortality in times of recession
Can recessions have permanent effects on people’s health in developing countries? This column looks at infant mortality in India and finds that recessions make things worse. The paradox is that this...
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Sonia Bhalotra
- 30 January, 2013
- Articles
Looking for icons to transform social norms
What can be done to reduce the incidence of rape? This article proposes that messages from role models such as cricketers and film stars can change outlooks. It outlines a strategy for measuring the e...
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Debraj Ray
- 28 January, 2013
- Perspectives
India's missing women by age and state
This column presents results of a study that breaks down “missing women” by age across the Indian states. It illustrates that Indian women face the risk of excess mortality at every stage of their...
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Siwan Anderson Debraj Ray
- 11 January, 2013
- Articles
Political reservation in India: The effect on poverty
Over the last 60 years, India’s Constitution has set aside seats in parliament for people from historically discriminated groups, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. This column documents one...
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Nishith Prakash
- 10 December, 2012
- Articles
Where have all the young girls gone? The rise in female foeticide in India
Gender inequality remains a huge issue in India and policies aimed at changing this are welcome. But this column finds that an unintended consequence of the introduction and spread of ultrasound scans...
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Sonia Bhalotra
- 07 November, 2012
- Articles
What explains gender disparities in economic participation in India?
The UN Global Gender Gap data shows that women’s economic participation and opportunity is worse in India than in 95% of all other countries studied. This column attempts to uncover what drives the ...
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Ejaz Ghani William Kerr Stephen D O'Connell
- 21 August, 2012
- Articles
The persistence of caste in India: An economic explanation
Despite many efforts by the government and by civic institutions, the caste system continues to have a firm hold on Indian society. This column presents an economic explanation for this persistence an...
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Kaivan Munshi
- 16 July, 2012
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Does Female Leadership Impact on the Quality of Public Goods? Evidence from a Public Poverty Alleviation Programme in Andhra Pradesh, India
This project used the nationwide policy of randomly allocating village council headships to women to identify the impact of female political leadership on the governance of projects implemented under ...
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Farzana Afridi Vegard Iversen M.R. Sharan
- 01 April, 2012
- IGC Research on India
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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
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