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
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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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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
Belief Formation of the Returns to Schooling and How to De-Bias Incorrect Beliefs
This project investigates how poor households in rural and urban Rajasthan form beliefs about the value of additional years of schooling.
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James Berry Lucas Coffman
- 31 March, 2012
- IGC Research on India
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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
- 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
- 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