20 June, 2025Food 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...
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Pulapre Balakrishnan Aman Raj 
06 June, 2025
- Perspectives
Rethinking social safety nets in a changing society
This paper was coauthored by Debasis Barik, Pallavi Choudhuri, Bijay Chouhan, Om Prakash Sharma, Dinesh Kumar Tiwari (NCAER) and Sharan Sharma (University of Maryland College Park and NCAER). Histori...
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Sonalde Desai
- 15 July, 2024
- Articles
Determining how many Indians are poor today
Poverty debates in India have seen a revival since the release of a fact sheet from the 2022-23 household consumption expenditure survey. In this post, Ghatak and Kumar note that the general consensus...
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Maitreesh Ghatak Rishabh Kumar
- 29 May, 2024
- Perspectives
Introduction to e-Symposium: Estimation of poverty in India
Estimates of poverty in India put forth in two papers published earlier this year – by Bhalla, Bhasin and Virmani; and Roy and van der Weide – have sparked the “Great Indian Poverty Debate 2.0...
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Maitreesh Ghatak
- 10 October, 2022
- Symposium
Measuring poverty in the absence of Consumption Expenditure Survey data
In the first post of a six-part series on , Surjit Bhalla and Karan Bhasin discuss issues related to measurement of absolute poverty in India. They summarise their IMF working paper from April 2022, a...
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Surjit Bhalla Karan Bhasin
- 10 October, 2022
- Perspectives
Has India eliminated extreme poverty?
In the second post of a six-part series on Gaurav Datt unpacks the claim that India was on the verge of eliminating extreme poverty, and questions two key assumptions on which it rests. Rather, he sh...
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Gaurav Datt
- 10 October, 2022
- Perspectives
The implications of India’s spatial development
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “poverty is the worst form of violence”. In this piece, Ejaz Ghani highlights India’s poverty burden, its regional disparities and convergence thereof. He highlights ho...
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Ejaz Ghani
- 30 September, 2022
- Articles
How financial access impacts women’s decision-making role in households
Government programmes which grant women access to financial support often provide assistance which is too small to significantly impact women’s economic position within the household. This article u...
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Anjini Kochar C. S. Nagabhusana Ritwik Sarkar Rohan Shah Geeta Singh
- 31 August, 2022
- Articles
The post-pandemic global inequality boomerang
Global inequality has fallen over the last three decades, despite a rise in inequality within some countries. This article uses a World Bank database covering the years 1981-2019 to posit that the dec...
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Ravi Kanbur Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez Andy Sumner
- 04 July, 2022
- Articles
Urban exclusion: Rethinking social protection in India in the wake of Covid-19
Economic insecurity caused by lockdowns during the early days of Covid-19 forced many households to rely on government welfare schemes to fulfil their consumption needs. Using data from the June 2020 ...
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Pallavi Choudhuri Sonalde Desai Santanu Pramanik
- 13 June, 2022
- Articles
Using personalised information delivery to improve uptake of emergency government benefits
Although many governments introduced additional benefits as part of existing welfare schemes for Covid-19 relief, there is often a significant gap between the introduction of, and access to these bene...
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Amrit Amirapu Irma Clots-Figueras Bansi Malde Anirban Mitra Debayan Pakrashi Zaki Wahhaj
- 01 June, 2022
- Articles
A microfinance model to enhance borrowers’ lifetime utility
Research has shown that providing credit along with services such as savings instruments, can increase the utility that borrowers obtain from credit. Presenting a theoretical model where microfinance ...
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Dyotona Dasgupta Prabal Roy Chowdhury
- 11 April, 2022
- Articles
Examining Himachal’s urban employment guarantee
Despite proposals by economists on the need for an urban work programme in India, a national-level policy seems some time away from coming to fruition. However, some states have implemented such progr...
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Krishna Priya Choragudi
- 21 March, 2022
- Notes from the Field
Covid-19 and long-term poverty: Evidence from rural Rajasthan
Based on preliminary calculations, it is being reported that 77-220 million have fallen into poverty in India on account of Covid-19, with the poor now accounting for 60% of urban, and 70% of rural re...
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Tushar Agrawal Anirudh Krishna
- 27 January, 2022
- Articles
Fatal oblivion: India's National Family Benefit Scheme
The National Family Benefit Scheme (NFBS) – which provides financial assistance to families in the event of the death of a breadwinner – has been plagued by low budget allocations, restricted cove...
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Jasmin Naur Hafiz
- 03 January, 2022
- Perspectives
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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