04 September, 2025Kerala’s silent crisis: Educated youth, but locked out of work
Despite performing well in terms of educational access and attainment, the southern state of Kerala exhibits very high rates of youth who are not in education, employment, or training. Based on qualit...
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Isha Gupta 
28 August, 2025
- Notes from the Field
When fathers migrate: Does It benefit or disrupt left-behind children’s education?
While studies have explored the impact of male out-migration on left-behind women, there is limited evidence on the effects on children. Analysing data from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, this artic...
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Pintu Paul
- 04 August, 2025
- Articles
Making vocational training more effective at improving youth employment outcomes
Youth unemployment remains a significant challenge in India, with large-scale public skilling programmes achieving limited success in improving labour-market outcomes. This article explains the approa...
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Evan Borkum Irina Cheban Edith Felix
- 16 July, 2025
- Articles
Designing incentives for mid-level officials in India's public sector
In the Indian public education system, block/cluster resource persons are mid-level officials who are responsible for monitoring the performance of teachers. In this note, Vivek et al. discuss their e...
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Pradyumna Bhattacharjee Utteeyo Dasgupta Subha Mani Kumar Vivek
- 18 November, 2020
- Notes from the Field
Using phone surveys to measure mental health
The public health and humanitarian crises caused by Covid-19 have led to greater recognition of the issue of poor mental health. Although mental health can affect work and quality of life much like ph...
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Diane Coffey Payal Hathi Nazar Khalid Amit Thorat
- 12 November, 2020
- Articles
Does early motherhood impact the development of children?
According to a new UNFPA report, the Covid-19 pandemic might cause 13 million additional child marriages – a key driver of early motherhood. Using panel data from South India, this article shows tha...
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Marta Favara Marcello Pérez-Alvarez
- 29 October, 2020
- Articles
Preferences or expectations? Understanding the gender gap in choice of college majors
A multidisciplinary literature – mostly focused on the US – shows that choice of majors among college students is gendered, and females are particularly under-represented in math-intensive fields....
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Aparajita Dasgupta Anisha Sharma
- 23 October, 2020
- Articles
Teacher accountability: Non-teaching work over classroom engagement
While the Right to Education Act, 2009 mandates 200 days of teaching for primary classes, the actual number seems to be much lower in government schools. Based on qualitative fieldwork and a survey in...
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Indira Patil
- 22 October, 2020
- Notes from the Field
Locked out of critical care: Covid-19 lockdown and non-Covid mortality
India’s 10-week long national lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19 was among the most severe in the world. This article investigates the effects of the lockdown restrictions on healthcare acce...
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Pascaline Dupas Radhika Jain
- 01 October, 2020
- Articles
Covid-19: How the pandemic evolved in Kerala over the 'unlock' phases
Kerala, the state with the largest number of Covid-19 cases when India entered the lockdown on 25 March, had only 16 active cases on 20 May. However, the second wave of the pandemic in the state, coin...
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Benston John
- 29 September, 2020
- Perspectives
On India’s ‘low’ Covid-19 case fatality rate
India’s Covid-19 case fatality rate is impressively low at 1.7%, compared to the world average of 4%. This apparently superior performance could, however, simply be a product of three factors: the c...
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Minu Philip Debraj Ray S. Subramanian
- 22 September, 2020
- Articles
Integrating technology into education systems: Lessons from Jharkhand
Ideas to improve the performance of India’s school system, many of which involve the use of information and communication technology, have been proposed and implemented with varying degrees of succe...
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Pradyumna Bhattacharjee Avinav Kumar Subha Mani Kumar Vivek
- 01 September, 2020
- Notes from the Field
School choice in rural India: Perception versus reality
School choice has increased significantly in India – with growth of low-fee private schools – and this is considered important within a market-based approach to schooling. Based on a field study a...
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Rahul Lahoti Rahul Mukhopadhyay
- 25 August, 2020
- Articles
How birth weight affects test scores during mid-childhood years
Besides lack of schooling resources, a possible reason why children grapple with low learning outcomes may be poor health at birth. Analysing data from Andhra Pradesh, this article finds that a 10% i...
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Santosh Kumar Utkarsh Singh
- 18 August, 2020
- Articles
Can greater access to education be inequitable?
Right to Education Act, 2009, was designed to provide the right to free, quality school education to all 6-14 year olds in India. This article examines the influence of RTE on the expansion of private...
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Chirantan Chatterjee Eric Hanushek Shreekanth Mahendiran
- 10 August, 2020
- Articles
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Human Development Posts
Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials in India: District-level estimates from Census 2011
The 2011 Indian Census data show a higher growth rate of Muslim population compared to the Hindu population. This article provides an in-depth picture of Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials at the di...
- Saswata Ghosh
- 27 March, 2019
- Articles
Understanding India’s mental health crisis
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, several reports have indicated a worsening of mental health issues among individuals across age groups. In this post, Michele Mary Bernadine examines the stat...
- Michele Mary Bernadine
- 06 April, 2021
- Perspectives
Ten steps to transform the quality of education in India
In this article, Sridhar Rajagopalan, Managing Director of Educational Initiatives, suggests 10 initiatives that can help transform the quality of education in India.
- Sridhar Rajagopalan
- 19 November, 2015
- Perspectives