24 September, 2025Election of criminal politicians and public service delivery
Why are politicians with criminal records elected to office, despite voters having the option to weed them out? Based on the hypothesis that criminal politicians strategically deliver targeted benefit...
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Abhinav Khemka 
18 September, 2025
- Articles
Boosting Lekhpal performance via data-driven feedback and recognition
The Lekhpals Actionable KPI System for Holistic Assessment and Management (LAKSHYAM) is an initiative to measure and enhance the work performance of Lekhpals, who are frontline functionaries of the Re...
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Fahad Hasin Sakshi Ugale
- 18 August, 2025
- Notes from the Field
Building State capacity for accelerating development through effective governance
In a new edition of I4I conversations, Maitreesh Ghatak (London School of Economics) is joined by Karthik Muralidharan (University of California, San Diego) to discuss his new book, Accelerating India...
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Maitreesh Ghatak Karthik Muralidharan
- 05 May, 2025
- Videos
‘I Paid A Bribe’: Using technology to fight corruption in India
‘I Paid A bribe’ (ipaidabribe.com) harnesses the collective energy of Indian citizens against corruption by enabling them to report anonymously on the nature, number, pattern, types, location, fre...
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Venkatesh Kannaiah
- 06 June, 2016
- Notes from the Field
The alcoholic mammaries of the welfare State
Tamil Nadu is known to give away more freebies to voters than any other state and these are financed mainly by massive revenues from liquor sales. In this article, Swaminathan Aiyar, Consulting Editor...
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Swaminathan Aiyar
- 30 May, 2016
- Articles
Impact of Electronic Voting Machines on electoral frauds, democracy, and development
In an attempt to curb electoral malpractices, Electronic Voting Machines were introduced on a national scale by the Election Commission of India in the 1990s. Using data from state assembly elections ...
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Sisir Debnath
- 19 May, 2016
- Articles
The first two years of Modi government
In this article, Pranab Bardhan, Professor of Graduate School at the Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, provides his perspective on the performance of the Modi government in ...
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Pranab Bardhan
- 11 May, 2016
- Perspectives
Aadhaar Bill: UID without excessively compromising privacy?
Can something like UID be created without compromising privacy beyond acceptable limits? If so, how should the Aadhaar Bill have been written? What are its specific and avoidable weaknesses?
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Jean Drèze Reetika Khera Raju Rajagopal
- 06 May, 2016
- Perspectives
Aadhaar Bill: Move towards a surveillance State?
Most advanced economies have had some version of UID for a long time, example, the Social Security number in the US, the Social Insurance Number in Canada, etc. This is recorded not only in interactio...
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Jean Drèze Reetika Khera Raju Rajagopal Bharat Ramaswami
- 05 May, 2016
- Perspectives
Aadhaar Bill and government benefits: Risk of increasing exclusion?
Supporters of Aadhaar express the hope that will reduce inclusion errors and corruption by eliminating ghost beneficiaries, say in schemes like MNREGA. Are there substantial benefits to be reaped on t...
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Jean Drèze Reetika Khera Raju Rajagopal Bharat Ramaswami
- 04 May, 2016
- Perspectives
Aadhaar Bill and government benefits: Better targeting and reduced corruption?
Supporters of Aadhaar express the hope that will reduce inclusion errors and corruption by eliminating ghost beneficiaries, say in schemes like MNREGA. Are there substantial benefits to be reaped on t...
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Jean Drèze Reetika Khera Raju Rajagopal Bharat Ramaswami
- 04 May, 2016
- Perspectives
Debate: The Aadhaar Bill
In a debate on the Aadhaar Bill, commentators from academia and civil society will weigh in on issues around potential benefits and privacy concerns.
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Parikshit Ghosh Ashok Kotwal
- 02 May, 2016
- Symposium
Aadhaar Bill: Incremental information-gathering powers for government?
The government already has the means to collect a lot of information on citizens (example, phone conversations and logs, credit card transactions, income tax records, bank account details, etc.). Conv...
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Jean Drèze Reetika Khera Raju Rajagopal Bharat Ramaswami
- 02 May, 2016
- Perspectives
Quality of governance and welfare outcomes
As the MDGs gave way to the SDGs, considerable attention has been focussed on movements in key welfare indicators for women and children in the past decade. In this context, this column compares India...
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Salma Ahmed Ranjan Ray
- 27 April, 2016
- Perspectives
Rethinking clientelism: Politics of service delivery in rural India
Clientelism is often blamed for public service delivery failures in developing countries. While the top-down drivers of political support in exchange for service delivery for specific constituents is ...
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Aditya Dasgupta
- 19 April, 2016
- Perspectives
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Governance Posts
Unique Health Identification and Aadhaar: A case for mandatory linkage
As part of the Digital India initiative, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) issues a Unique Health Identification (UHID) number to each patient, which documents their entire journey in th...
- Mudit Kapoor
- 23 December, 2016
- Perspectives
Caste dominance in rural India: Cause and effect
Rural India remains a caste-based society. This column explores why caste continues to play such an important role and what the effects are. It argues that trade and agricultural productivity suffer, ...
- Siwan Anderson
- 16 August, 2012
- Articles
The digital dream: Upskilling India for the future
While the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the pace at which technology is becoming commonplace in our lives, it has also exposed a stark digital divide, leaving a large proportion of India’s popul...
- Venugopal Mothkoor Fatima Mumtaz
- 23 March, 2021
- Perspectives