A power grid has to perform a continuous balancing act. At every moment, the total electricity being produced (the ‘generation’) must match the total being consumed (the ‘load’). For most of its history, the central worry about the grid was whether there was enough generation capacity. Over the last decade, India has answered that question …
Read more “The Duck and The Camel: Tracing the Net Load on the Indian Power Grid”
Cash transfer programmes targeted at women have become one of the fastest-growing categories of state-level welfare spending in India. By FY26, more than fifteen states had introduced some form of unconditional monthly or annual transfer paid directly into women’s bank accounts, at an estimated aggregate cost of roughly Rs 1.7 lakh crore and reaching close …
India’s labour market and its large informal enterprise sector present two interlinked development challenges. On the labour side, the persistence of informal employment, low female labour force participation, minimum wage non-compliance, and an expanding youth workforce have been central concerns in India’s employment discourse (World Bank, 2016; La Porta and Shleifer, 2014). On the enterprise …
India’s parliamentary constituencies are very large by global standards: the median Lok Sabha Parliamentray Constituency (PC) electorate reached 1.82 million registered electors in 2024. The conventional reading of Indian turnout has been that very large PCs suppress voting; we show this “size penalty” is now a compositional artefact. Across 2,171 PC-elections in 2009, 2014, 2019 …
Economic reform debates usually tend to gravitate towards the big reforms. Reforms such as tax system overhauls, introduction of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), inflation targeting usually dominate headlines. These are structural reforms, which make changes to the underlying framework of an economy. While such reforms are important, they overlook a quieter but equally powerful …
The policy on priority sector lending has been in place in India for almost five decades and banks are required to direct at least 40% of their overall credit towards the priority sector. The priority sector encompasses a broad range of economic activities such as the provision of credit to small and marginal farmers, micro …
Read more “Economic impact analysis of Priority Sector Lending”
India’s demographic profile is shifting – a growing share of elders and declining fertility, compounded by rapid urbanisation that is eroding the traditional family structures that have historically provided care. Indian states are at varying stages of this demographic transition– from high child dependency to accelerating elderly dependency. The pressures of declining fertility and ageing …
Read more “Reimagining the Care Economy: From Private Burden to Social and Economic Infrastructure”
The recent paper by Anand, Felman and Subramanian (2026) argues that India’s January 2015 national accounts methodology revision caused GDP growth to be overstated by approximately 1.5-2 percentage points per year between FY2011-12 and FY2024-25. The paper presents evidence for this view using informal-sector survey data, cross-country regressions, and correlation analysis that is the focus …
Read more “What the Data Cannot Say: Small-Sample Inference and India’s National Accounts”
The Government of India’s introduction of the SVAMITVA scheme marks a landmark policy effort in rural property-rights reform. By seeking to provide formal recognition to residential abadi holdings that have long remained outside clear legal and financial records, the scheme lays foundation for stronger tenure security, better local governance and wider participation in formal credit …
Read more “Unlocking Rural Property Rights: Social Inclusion and Credit Expansion through SVAMITVA”
The conduct of elections in India demands substantial manpower, particularly polling personnel (PP), to carry out the poll at polling stations (PSs). This paper estimates the potential reduction in PP deployment under a simultaneous election framework. There are other potential benefits of simultaneous elections, but they are outside the scope of this paper. The Election …
Read more “ESTIMATING REDUCTION IN POLLING PERSONNEL DEPLOYMENT UNDER SIMULTANEOUS ELECTIONS”
We are living in the epoch of urbanisation. Cities have been engines of economic growth for several centuries but their centrality in global production and consumption has accelerated in the last five decades at an unparalleled rate. A McKinsey report as far back as 2012 noted that just 440 cities in developing countries would be …
Read more “India’s Hidden Urbanisation & Its Policy Implications”
Financial inclusion represents a fundamental human rights imperative, linking economic access to dignity and opportunity. India’s decade-long journey toward universal financial inclusion offers crucial insights into how digital public infrastructure can overcome traditional barriers to financial access. Through the strategic deployment of the India Stack, comprising digital identity (Aadhaar), universal banking (Jan Dhan Yojana), and …
Read more “Financial Inclusion as a Path to Equality: Lessons from India”
The Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2023-24 delivers an uncomfortable truth India can no longer afford to ignore: tobacco consumption is rising fast, spreading wider, and embedding itself deeper into the lives of poorer households – just as the state expands publicly funded healthcare. This collision of trends is not accidental, and it carries serious …
Read more “Rise in Tobacco Consumption and Policy Implications”
India has witnessed unprecedented infrastructure development over the past decade. A cornerstone of this transformation is the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan (PMGS-NMP)1, launched in October 2021, which adopts an integrated, multimodal approach to infrastructure planning aimed at generating strong growth multipliers. Within this framework, high-quality mass transit systems—particularly metro rail corridors—have emerged as a …
Expenditure on durable goods (such as transport equipment and household appliances) is a useful indicator of economic well-being and living standards of households. Consumption of durable goods is also reflective of the future utility to households (and improved productivity) from the use of such goods. This study compares the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2023–24 with …
