Researchers Publication

Sonalde Desai Debasis Barik and Tushar Agarwal  There is something ironic about politicians making announcements about the Right to Education or the Right to Health when the only thing they can ensure is allocation of funds. Their control over the usage of these funds is somewhat weak; the overall quality of services is even weaker;...   Read More

Private school enrolment continues to rise but the already low levels of what children are learning in schools — both government and private — continue to fall new data shows. The Hindu is reporting exclusively on the findings of the 2011-12 round of India Human Development Survey (IHDS) a representative national sample of 42000 households carried...   Read More

This paper examines two issues: • What is the likely impact of the entry of private health insurance companies in India, on the costs of health care, equity in the financing of care, and the quality and cost-effectiveness of such care? • In light of the above, what are the main regulatory gaps in the health sector...   Read More

As part of India Human Development Survey the team covered 42000 households across the country Employment in agriculture has fallen sharply over the last seven years and a combination of farm-oriented and non-farm work is now the most common form of rural employment according to the findings of a nationwide representative sample survey conducted by...   Read More

The Centre’s rural employment guarantee scheme can be substantially improved but it has undeniably helped Dalits Adivasis and women find work In an era of growing globalisation and rising inequality the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) stands out as a unique attempt to provide a social safety net via a massive public...   Read More

Two in five Indian women didn’t choose their spouse and about one in two was married before the legal age of 18 according to a new study that paints a grim statistical picture of married women across the country. The National Council for Applied Economic Research a New Delhi-based think tank based their findings on interviews...   Read More

Sonalde Desai On International Women’s Day the Election Commission of India held a special campaign to bring women voters to the polls. Although men and women vote at a more or less similar rate in State elections women are 6-8 percentage points behind in the Lok Sabha elections where national issues dominate. These disparities prompt...   Read More

Four out of ten women in India still have no say in their marriage eight out of ten need permission to visit a doctor six out of ten practise some form of head covering and the average Indian household gives over Rs. 30000 in dowry. These are among the findings of a major new large-scale...   Read More

Indian households have always accounted for the major share of gross domestic savings. But they seem to have lost the savings habit now. You can blame some of that on consumerism. But what explains the fall in the share of their savings in financial instruments? Received wisdom says persistently high inflation since 2009. Years of...   Read More

Despite their significance and importance to the economy, research on domestic remittances in India has been severely limited by the lack of nationally representative data on such remittances.

Domestic violence is recognised as a serious violation of women’s basic rights. Conventional economic models of domestic violence suggest that higher participation by women in the labour force leads to a decrease in domestic violence. In this paper, we study the relationship between women employment and domestic violence in India. We used a nationally representative...   Read More

After a slide in the second quarter of the present fiscal higher exports enhanced farm produce and moderation in inflation improved business confidence during the October-December period think-tank NCAER said on Monday. The Business Confidence Index (BCI) rose by 21.8 per cent in theJanuary 2014 survey over the previous quarter the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER)...   Read More