31 July, 2025What broad lessons have we learned from 115 studies on unconditional cash transfers?
Globally, around 700 million people currently live in extreme poverty, and in recent years, unconditional cash transfers have emerged as a popular tool for poverty alleviation in low- and middle-incom...
-
Tommaso Crosta Dean Karlan Finley Ong Julius Ruschenpohler Christopher Udry 
20 June, 2025
- Articles
Food deprivation: A thali index reveals what poverty estimates do not
Poverty in India is typically estimated based on a poverty line that identifies the purchasing power needed to satisfy the daily calorific intake deemed necessary. In this post, Balakrishnan and Raj m...
-
Pulapre Balakrishnan Aman Raj
- 06 June, 2025
- Perspectives
Could better jobs for men have improved gender equality?
Evidence indicates that economic growth can improve gender equality. In this post, Sujata Balasubramanian suggests that India’s high-growth period from 1982-83 to 2011-12 failed to do so substantial...
-
Sujata Balasubramanian
- 25 April, 2025
- Articles
Private investment and income disparity across Indian states
Liberalisation reforms in India in the 1990s offered private investors the freedom to choose their investment location in the country. This column finds that income disparity across low-income states...
-
Jagannath Mallick
- 03 June, 2015
- Articles
Big and small ideas in development economics: Theory, evidence and practice
Karthik Muralidharan, Associate Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego speaks with Kaushik Basu, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, World Bank and former Chief Economic A...
-
Kaushik Basu Karthik Muralidharan
- 03 February, 2015
- Videos
Financial literacy: When, what and how
The need for financial literacy and its importance for financial inclusion have been widely recognised. Based on various research studies on financial literacy initiatives, this column outlines finan...
-
Parul Agarwal
- 05 January, 2015
- Articles
Impact of MNREGA on labour markets
There is an active, ongoing debate on whether MNREGA should be retained in its current form. This column reports on research which suggests that MNREGA increased rural and urban wages and reduced sea...
-
Clément Imbert John Papp
- 22 December, 2014
- Articles
Workfare as an effective way to fight poverty: The case of India's MNREGA
The fundamental appeal of a workfare programme, vis-à-vis a welfare programme, is that it helps in targeting the beneficiaries. This column assesses the welfare impact of MNREGA on poor rural househ...
-
Shamika Ravi
- 11 December, 2014
- Articles
MNREGA's swan song: Not everyone's idea of achche din
Over the last few months, the central government announced a set of measures to restrict MNREGA. The rationale essentially revolves around corruption in the scheme and lack of economic viability. In ...
-
Amitava Gupta
- 14 November, 2014
- Perspectives
(Mis)Leading attack on MNREGA
Bhagwati and Panagariya have argued for phasing out MNREGA in favour of cash transfers. In this article, Abreu et al. contend that the argument is based on inflating the costs of the programme and de...
-
Dilip Abreu Pranab Bardhan Maitreesh Ghatak Ashok Kotwal Dilip Mookherjee Debraj Ray
- 12 November, 2014
- Perspectives
Switching to sanitation in South Asia: A study of health technology adoption (a seed study)
Open defecation in rural India presents a puzzle: India has far higher open defecation rates than other developing regions where people are poorer, literacy rates are lower, and water is more scarce.
-
Diane Coffey
- 31 October, 2014
- IGC Research on India
A critical assessment of the Rangarajan Panel Report on poverty measurement
An expert committee headed by C Rangarajan was appointed by the government to rethink poverty measurement in India. This column provides a critical assessment of the recently released report of the C...
-
Ranjan Ray Kompal Sinha
- 30 October, 2014
- Articles
Is the proposed restructuring of MNREGA desirable?
The rural development ministry plans to restrict MNREGA to the 200 most backward districts, and reduce the wage component of the total expenditure of the programme. In this article, Ashwini Kulkarni ...
-
Ashwini Kulkarni
- 20 October, 2014
- Perspectives
The 'urban sprawl' and declining rural-urban inequality
India has experienced rapid urbanisation in the past three decades. Has urbanisation impacted the economic wellbeing of rural and urban workers? This column finds that the rural-urban wage gap has sh...
-
Viktoria Hnatkovska Amartya Lahiri
- 29 September, 2014
- Articles
Please weight
The latest wealth index by New World Wealth that looks at multimillionaires has ranked India eighth in the global rich list. This article contends that looking at absolute numbers may be misleading. ...
-
Maitreesh Ghatak Debraj Ray
- 05 September, 2014
- Perspectives
Twitter feed
Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Poverty & Inequality Posts
Wealth inequality, class, and caste in India: 1961-2012
The level of wealth inequality in India is close to that of some highly unequal countries in the world. This article assesses the long-term evolution of wealth inequality in the country for the period...
- Nitin Kumar Bharti
- 28 June, 2019
- Articles
Covid-19: What can be done immediately to help vulnerable population
With over 80% of India’s workforce employed in the informal sector and one-third working as casual labour, Covid-19's spread and subsequent unplanned lockdowns, have created economic havoc in the li...
- Reetika Khera
- 25 March, 2020
- Perspectives
A review of the coverage of PDS
The coverage of the Public Distribution System (PDS) has been of wide interest due to the pandemic and lockdown. Based on government data sources, Khera and Somanchi estimate the state-wise coverage o...
- Reetika Khera Anmol Somanchi
- 19 August, 2020
- Perspectives