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
Has Budget 2023-24 been successful in balancing gender priorities?
Ahead of International Women’s Day, Tanya Rana and Neeha Susan Jacob categorise and analyse scheme allocations through the Union Budget’s Gender Budget Statement (GBS), by looking at what schemes ...
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Tanya Rana Neeha Susan Jacob
- 06 March, 2023
- Perspectives
Does being local matter? Administrative decentralisation and human development
In this post, Chaudhary and Iyer discuss the administrative decentralisation reforms brought about by the Panchayati Raj Act, and measure the effect of decentralisation on the provision of public serv...
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Latika Chaudhary Lakshmi Iyer
- 13 January, 2023
- Articles
Analysing e-governance service delivery outcomes: Insights from eTaal
In this piece, Trivedi and Mumtaz attempt to analyse the performance of e-governance service delivery across different tiers of government and service categories, through the volume of end-to-end elec...
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Fatima Mumtaz Anand Trivedi
- 04 January, 2023
- Perspectives
Improving admissions to technical colleges in India
Following their note on the issues that may arise from the ambiguity of EWS reservation policies, Aygün, Turhan, and Yenmez provide a critique of the multi-run deferred-acceptance algorithm currently...
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Orhan Aygün Bertan Turhan M. Bumin Yenmez
- 16 December, 2022
- Perspectives
Challenges of executing EWS reservation efficiently
A recent Supreme Court judgement excluded members of reserved categories from the scope of EWS. Aygün, Turhan, and Yenmez look at the implications of this decision, including reserved category member...
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Orhan Aygün Bertan Turhan M. Bumin Yenmez
- 14 December, 2022
- Perspectives
Introduction to e-Symposium: The architecture of affirmative action
The Supreme Court of India recently upheld an amendment that excluded Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backwards Classes from the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) quota, restricting it on...
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Parikshit Ghosh
- 12 December, 2022
- Symposium
Design choices for implementing affirmative action
In this expository piece, Ashutosh Thakur explains the various ways in which affirmative action policies can be implemented, and discusses the underlying tradeoffs and issues at hand. He delineates th...
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Ashutosh Thakur
- 12 December, 2022
- Perspectives
Panchsutras for carrying out a successful Governance Transformation
Following his last piece, which put forth a Governance Matrix that could be used assess a government system’s readiness to drive outcomes, Gaurav Goel puts forth five principles, or panchsutras, whi...
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Gaurav Goel
- 09 December, 2022
- Perspectives
The panchayat asset register: An instrument to conserve India’s commons
With common lands making up nearly a quarter of Indian territory, the State has taken steps to protect them from encroachment. The Indian Constitution grants panchayats custodial rights to protect vil...
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Pooja Chandran Subrata Singh
- 07 December, 2022
- Perspectives
The Governance Matrix: Understanding a system’s readiness for change
To explain the gap between the expectation of perfect outcomes and the reality of an imperfect system, Gaurav Goel puts forth The Governance Matrix, a tool which can be used to assess the readiness of...
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Gaurav Goel
- 02 December, 2022
- Perspectives
Time in office and gender gap in dishonesty: Evidence from local politics
Existing literature associates a higher share of women in politics with lower corruption; honesty is viewed as an inherent or static character trait. However, using information collected from 400 elec...
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Ananish Chaudhuri Vegard Iversen Francesca R. Jensenius Pushkar Maitra
- 16 November, 2022
- Articles
Party preferences and strategic voting in India
In the absence of compelling information that would allow them to accurately predict election outcomes in their constituency, many voters believe that their preferred candidate will win. Looking at vo...
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Oliver Heath Adam Ziegfeld
- 06 October, 2022
- Articles
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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