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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
Maitreesh Ghatak Karthik Muralidharan
- 05 May, 2025
- Videos
Litigation over Eminent Domain Compensation
In the recent past, use of Eminent Domain to acquire land for developmental purposes has become highly controversial. Several parts of India have experienced violent protests against the compulsory ac...
-
Ram Singh
- 01 September, 2013
- IGC Research on India
Correct costs of the Food Security Bill
In a recent article, Surjit Bhalla has asserted that the Food Security Bill will increase costs of food grain subsidy by 336%. Correcting errors in his calculation brings this figure down to 18%. In t...
-
Ashok Kotwal Milind Murugkar Bharat Ramaswami
- 28 August, 2013
- Perspectives
Assessment of MGNREGA Divas
The project was carried out at the request of Rural Development Department (RDD) in Bihar to better understand whether MNREGA Divas (MD) visits are happening as frequently as prescribed and aslo asses...
-
IDinsight Research
- 16 August, 2013
- IGC Research on India
Getting India wrong
In this article, Partha Dasgupta argues that deliberations on economic development, as in the recently published books by Bhagwati-Panagariya and Dreze-Sen respectively, are of little instrumental use...
-
Partha Dasgupta
- 12 August, 2013
- Perspectives
The National Food Security Ordinance: Five misconceptions
The National Food Security Ordinance was promulgated in July 2013. The public debate that ensued, especially the criticism in the business media, has tended to be either devoid of facts or factually ...
-
Reetika Khera
- 07 August, 2013
- Perspectives
I4I turns 1!
It has been a year since the voice of ‘Ideas for India’ was first heard. Our mission was to be an outlet for evidence-based arguments on a wide set of issues relevant to Indian growth and developm...
-
Ashok Kotwal
- 06 August, 2013
- Perspectives
Star Wars
Debraj Ray gets to the heart of the growth versus redistribution debate and argues that a sectoral imbalance in growth is inevitable. While occupational choice is an important way to deal with this, ...
-
Debraj Ray
- 05 August, 2013
- Perspectives
Economic growth versus social development: The spatial dimension
In the context of the economic growth versus social development debate sparked off by Bhagwati and Sen, this column argues for a more nuanced approach to assessing progress. Combining nationally repre...
-
Ranjan Ray
- 31 July, 2013
- Articles
Turn Right or Left? Or is there a middle way?
Dilip Mookherjee shares his perspective on the recent Bhagwati versus Sen debate. While Sen represents the pro-state-led assistance stand and Bhagwati is seen as pro-market, what India requires is th...
-
Dilip Mookherjee
- 25 July, 2013
- Perspectives
Food Bill: Neither populist nor unaffordable
Criticism of the National Food Security Bill has led to the government dropping the idea of issuing an Ordinance and instead, saying it would try to get the Bill passed in a special session of Parlia...
-
Ashok Kotwal Milind Murugkar Bharat Ramaswami
- 19 June, 2013
- Perspectives
Cash Transfer versus In-Kind Transfers: A conceptual framework and preliminary evidence
This project studied the performance of a conditional cash transfer scheme called Mukhyamantri Cycle Yojana, which provides money to purchase a bicycle to every student who is enrolled in standard nin...
-
Maitreesh Ghatak Sandip Mitra
- 01 June, 2013
- IGC Research on India
Bihar's malnutrition crisis and potential solutions
The prevalence of underweight children in Bihar is higher than in any country in the world, and the provision of public services to address malnutrition is poor. Based on an assessment of the governm...
-
Ronald Abraham Andrew Fraker
- 24 May, 2013
- Articles
Twitter feed
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