Banks play a critical role in economic growth. In India, the banking sector, dominated by public sector banks (PSBs), has underserved the economy and their stakeholders. The under-performance of PSBs has persisted despite several policy initiatives during the past decade. Meanwhile, private banks have further improved their performance and have gained significant market share. In... Read More
Data on access to credit in rural India is mostly available from periodic large-scale surveys and some primary research in different parts of India. The growth of institutional sources of credit was quite dramatic during the first four decades after Independence. There appears to have been a regression since then. There is some evidence to... Read More
Various policy mechanisms are available to support the positive effects of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and reduce the negative outcomes of economic activities on the environment through effective interventions. To preserve the integration of dairy development strategies and practices with SDGs, this paper examines the key relationships involved in this process by major stakeholders... Read More
We review arguments for CBDC issuance in India. These include facilitating payments, enhancing financial inclusion, enabling the central bank and government to retain control of the payments system, facilitating cross-border payments, reducing dependence on the dollar-dominated global payments system, providing an encompassing platform for digital financial innovation. We then compare progress in India with other... Read More
In this paper, we analyze the deep and anomalous economic slowdown in 2019-20, when the Indian economy grew at a rate of 4 percent, the lowest in a decade. We argue that the slowdown was largely confined to one year, 2019-20. The growth rate in the prior years averaged at 7 percent a year, and... Read More
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, telephone surveys have been used extensively for carrying out studies on health knowledge, morbidity, and mortality surveillance. In order to understand the extent of different sources of non-observation errors in telephone surveys, we compare the distributions of units covered in the sampling frame and survey respondents with those... Read More
Over the past two decades, we have seen an explosion in research on the topic of women’s empowerment and its related dimensions, and yet much remains to be done in terms of clarifying conceptual pathways and best practices in measurement. This review traces the intellectual and historic context in which women’s status and empowerment in... Read More
The COVID-19 pandemic, and the consequent nationwide lockdown in India that began on March 25, 2020, caused a major disruption in the labour market, leading to the widespread loss of livelihoods and food insecurity. The findings from a telephonic survey of a representative sample of more than 3,000 households in the National Capital Region (NCR)... Read More
In the Land Governance space, a meaningful conversation on the issue of ‘How’ and in ‘What’ format should Title Registers (generally called Record of Rights - RoRs, in rural India) be maintained in India, has been missing. Literature is very scanty on a subject that has considerable bearing on the utility of land records as... Read More
Insecure land rights often constrain the economic prospects of women and make them vulnerable to poverty and gender-based violence. Despite the fact that women play critical roles in agricultural operations, they have limited access to, control and ownership of land. Even if women own lands, the area of these plots is smaller than or their... Read More