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Getting India’s Growth Priority Right
Janak Raj underscores India's imperative to prioritise human development hand in hand with economic growth.Interview | ‘Developing Just a Small Part of City as Smart...
Om Prakash Mathur talks about how India needs to manage its urban growth much faster, how the programme to develop smart cities has not helped and how, despite successive Finance Commissions recommending increasing the grant-in-aid to our municipalities.Interview | Navigating India’s Urban Challenges
India's leading urban scholar and the author of "Changing Paradigms of Urbanisation: India and Beyond" Om Prakash Mathur reveals how rigid urban land and labour markets have actually slowed down the rate of India's urbanisation.The Dip in Private Medical Colleges
Apart from being churned frequently, the regulatory norms entail high capital and operating costs.Podcast | Why are house prices so high in India?
In this episode, Shishir Gupta discusses the factors behind the high cost of housing in India and suggests possible solutions.The Real Reason Middle Class Indians Can’t Afford to Buy Homes — and...
The first step in improving affordability is to release land supply in a planned and transparent manner. This will increase competition and put pressure on prices.Interlinkages Between Economic Growth and Human Development in India: A...
This study explores the relationship between economic growth and non-income components (health and education) of the Human Development Index (HDI) for 26 Indian states during the period from 1990 to 2019.Improving Healthcare Access to Address the Rise in Non-communicable...
The authors outline the incidence of diseases in Indian states over the last two decades, and the role that the PMJAY programme plays to alleviate constraints to healthcare accessInterlinkages Between Economic Growth and Human Development in India: A...
India must significantly increase its public spending on health and education, and ensure its effective targeting. This would reduce people’s out-of-pocket expenses, allowing them to allocate funds to their other crucial needs and strengthen the interlinkages between human development and economic growth.A Report on Voluntary Health Insurance in India: A Bridge Towards...
Madhurima Nundy and Pankhuri Bhatt's paper presents a detailed review and analysis of India’s health insurance landscape, with a focus on voluntary health insurance (VHI).House Prices in India: How High, and for How Long?
Shishir Gupta, Nandini Agnihotri and Annie George shed light on the state and dynamics of house prices in India by leveraging a unique dataset that gives house prices over the past 30 years.Curing the States’ Doctor Deficiency
The challenge is the production and distribution of doctors. The doctor availability across states is very variable, and there are numerous factors driving this: state’s economic status, public health expenditure, expenditure on medical education.India Needs More Doctors — and How It Can Happen
The goal of equity requires attention to incentives and encouraging migration to low-availability areas rather than restricting production. The policy focus, therefore, should be on addressing the barriers to scale.G20’s Inclusive Thrust Should Extend to Global Governance on Health...
The inability of global governance to impose checks and balances to ensure that the health needs of less endowed countries are served is worrying, writes Sandhya Venkateswaran.Out-of-pocket Health Expenditure in India: Inter-state Variations
In this op-ed, Janak Raj and Harshini Kumari explain the large inter-state variations in out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) on health in India.Medical Education in India: A Study of Supply-Side Dynamics
The paper argues for a rethink of the existing regulatory and policy requirements pertaining to setting up and, more importantly, scaling up medical colleges, in order to ensure a greater number of seats per college, and for a more equitable distribution of seats.Voluntary Health Insurance and its Expansion
Madhurima Nundy and Pankhuri Bhatt write about the challenges to voluntary health insurance and its expansion.Are We Ready for HPV Vaccines?
India cannot afford to let women suffer and then perhaps die of the most curable cancer. Important here is to also strategize vaccination with regular screening for women aged 30 and above.Health System Reforms for Universal Health Coverage: Insights from Select...
This policy brief synthesises insights, relating to key challenges faced in achieving UHC, from six emerging country case studies—Brazil, China, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand, and Turkey—with varying contexts in their journey towards UHC.Economic Growth and Human Development in India: Are States Converging?
This Working Paper examines the key aspects of the relationship between economic growth (EG) and human development (HD) at the all-India and the state-levels.Ban Pan-masala Promotions
Jaimini Bhagwati writes about the dangers of celebrities advertising pan masala and how it can impact the youth.Assessing the Potential of Telemedicine in Health Care Services
Addressing concerns such as differences in data-sharing rules and guidelines, building a robust digital infrastructure, streamlining accreditation and qualification of doctors etc. can aid in telemedicine gaining widespread acceptance.Health Among Top Three Priorities for Indian Voters After Jobs and...
This suggests that political leaders may gain electoral capital from prioritising health in their election campaigns and during their terms in office.Health and democracy in India: Do voters care about health?
Oliver Heath, Jyoti Mishra, Louise Tillin & Sandhya Venkateswaran examine how Indian citizens view health through a five-state survey on electoral perceptions around health in IndiaUniversal Health Coverage – The Goal’s Nowhere in Sight
With the National Health Accounts suggesting poor expenditure on health, it is hard to assess when and how the Universal Health Coverage goal will be achieved, writes Janak RajGovt’s Increase in Health Expenditure a Welcome Step. But Indians are...
Analysing the GHE and OOPE data at national and state levels shows the need for deeper inquiry. The attribution of increased govt spending to declining out-of-pocket expenditure isn't apparent, write Alok Kumar Singh and Sandhya Venkateswaran.Political Motivation as a Key Driver for Universal Health Coverage
The paper separates motivation as a distinct factor for analysis because, in the absence of strong incentives, not every political opportunity may lead to attention to an issue, and finds that reforms were motivated by a need to gain political legitimacy by an incoming regime, or by its political ideology, or a ...Health System in the Kingdom of Thailand: Reforms, Achievements and...
Health systems in Thailand have been frequently researched since its reforms in early 2000s, especially in the context of health coverage (UHC).Health System in Brazil: Reforms, Transformation and Challenges
Sandhya Venkateswaran and Alok Kumar Singh traces the trajectory of health system reform in Brazil, from 1990 to 2019, and analyses the contextual factors that drove the reform process.Health System in the Republic of Indonesia: Reforms, Transformations, and...
Madhurima Nundy and Pankhuri Bhatt analyse systemic transformations and studies the achievements and challenges in reforming health services in Indonesia over the years to the present.The Political Journey of Healthcare in Select Indian States
This paper examines the political trajectory of health in five Indian states, in terms of the sociopolitical determinants of attention to health, to understand differences in health status and investments, as well as to gain insights into how health came to be prioritised in some of them, which might be instructive across ...Health Systems Reforms and Transformations: Insights from Country Studies
The Health System Reforms and Transformation: Insights from Country Studies is a series of six case studies from China, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, and Thailand that trace the trajectory of health reforms and draw lessons in understanding key instruments that led to these shifts.Health System in Mexico: Reforms, Transformation and Challenges
Alok Kumar Singh and Sandhya Venkateswaran trace the trajectory of health system reforms, including and prior to Seguro Popular (SP), from 2003 until 2019, and analyses the contextual factors that were instrumental in the reform process.Health System in Turkey: Reforms, Transformation and Challenges
Sandhya Venkateswaran and Alok Kumar Singh trace the trajectory of health system reform in Turkey, from 2003 to 2019, and analyses the contextual factors that drove the reform process.Health System in People’s Republic of China (PRC): Reforms,...
Madhurima Nundy and Sandhya Venkateswaran's paper outlines the salient features of health reforms in China and their impact in terms of access, utilisation and equity through a systems framework.UHC in India: Insights from Indonesia and China
Benefit coverage has to be comprehensive to include preventive, curative, rehabilitative services to ensure continuity in care, rational practices and a cost-efficient system, write Madhurima Nundy and Pankhuri Bhatt.Towards A More Equal Society
Anchoring Change: lessons from seventy-five years of successful grassroots intervention.Using construction technologies to solve mass housing woes
A reflection on the challenges to adoption of alternative technologies in mass housing projects and the way forward for the Global Housing Technology Challenge program.Naysayers are Wrong, India Does have Success Stories
Too many people believe that India cannot fulfil the promise of its founding fathers. There are stories and examples that show it is possible, writes Vikram Singh Mehta.Political Motivation as a Key Driver for Universal Health Coverage
Political motivation does not always arise by itself, but it is often driven by external factors and stakeholders who contribute to creating or strengthening incentives for political attention, writes Sandhya Venkateswaran, Shruti Slaria and Sampriti Mukherjee.Dismal Realities about Healthcare in the National Capital Region
"It is surprising that the Indian insurance regulator allows so many exceptions under private health insurance."International Day of Women in Diplomacy
Ramu Damodaran reflects upon the journey of women's representation at the United Nations on the ocassion of International Day of Women in Diplomacy.Right to Health Laws Need Political Support
Realising the right to health requires a system that enables quality and affordable access to health services for citizens, writes Sandhya Venkateswaran and Nikhil Iyer.Why AI Failed to Live Up to Its Potential During the Pandemic
The pandemic could have been the moment when AI made good on its promising potential. There was an unprecedented convergence of the need for fast, evidence-based decisions and large-scale problem-solving with datasets spilling out of every country in the world.Health Status in India: Challenges and Opportunities
India has experienced considerable progress in health, in outcomes as also infrastructure. However, the task of addressing the health of India’s citizens remains an unfinished task.Does India’s Development Model Need an Overhaul?
While the effects of the recent pandemic have indeed set India’s economy back several years, it is not clear if, prior to it, the development model that we were pursuing was the one best suited to ensuring that we realise our full potential as a country and as a people.India’s Health Status and Emerging Priorities
The progress on several indicators since the 2014-15 survey points to the success of interventions on various fronts, although a cross-year comparison reveals that progress has slowed down for many states.The Good, Bad, and Sober News that the NFHS Data Presents
As always, national averages belie inter-state differentials. Of note is the change in such differentials over the 2005-20 period.The Political Pathway to Health System Improvements in India
With a predominantly family health and infectious disease focus, India’s health system is not well geared to deal with the increasing burden of noncommunicable diseases.Waste Management and Cleanliness in Cities: Linking Expenditure with...
Our results indicate that while SWM expenditure per capita is positive and statistically significant at 1% level, waste generation is completely insignificant, argues Shishir Gupta and Rishita Sachdeva.Recognising The Role of Health in India’s Social and Economic Growth
When we focus on health, there has been progress, but India remains well below peer countries — and where it needs to be — in terms of the well being of citizens. This stems from multiple reasons.Can Property Rights Improve Access to Toilets for the Urban Poor? Evidence...
Shaonlee Patranabis and Sahil Gandhi analyse slum laws from three states, studying two approaches to improvement of slums—redevelopment, and provision of property rights.One Year of CSEP: Essential Reading on Economic Growth and Finance
On the one-year anniversary of CSEP, we bring you eight essential readings on the Indian economy.One Nation One Ration Card will increase India’s food security
The One Nation One Ration Card scheme will create a central repository and help in the deduplication of ration cards, which in turn help in removing leakages from the system.Higher Funding Alone Doesn’t Improve Urban Services
Adequate expenditure alone is not enough to improve public services and other outcomes, write Shishir Gupta and Rishita Sachdeva.Lessons on expenditure and performance on cleanliness on Indian cities
HT Insight features CSEP's recent study on mapping expenditure and outcomes for improved service delivery across Indian cities.Bringing Farming To Private Markets Is A Good Idea
Montek Singh Ahluwalia says he wishes the idea of agriculture reforms was communicated more effectively to farmers.Biden’s ‘Antitrust Revolution’ Overlooks AI—at Americans’ Peril
A handful of companies have outsize influence on the world’s artificial intelligence. Policymakers must act now.Revisiting the role of funding for improved urban services
Stable city leadership, effective PPP, and citizen engagement play a key role in providing better SWM servicesWomen leaders, and women voters, matter
Increasing Indian women's political participation has significant impacts on social policy and development prioritiesThere is still hope for a more compassionate, united world
There is still hope that binding commonalities of humanity – trust, compassion, friendship, conversation – can usher change.Why India shows the need for democracies to prioritise healthcare
The Covid-19 pandemic offers the opportunity to reimagine the political foundations of health in India.Implications for income generated through crypto trading
Levying tax on cryptocurrency cannot be avoided solely because of the form of income in which it is collected.Ramping up vaccinations should be accorded top priority by India
The command-and-control structure has let us down and we must soon let markets and the private sector play a larger role.Revisiting the role of funding: Lessons from expenditure and performance...
As large parts of Bengaluru remain under water, we revisit a paper by Shishir Gupta and Rishita Sachdeva on the role of funding in delivering better urban services. Using SWM as an example, the authors argue that service delivery levels can increase significantly without spending (much) more.Do property rights explain health outcomes of adolescent girls in India?
The study reveals the state of property rights in India and presents an analyses of issues pertaining to security of tenure.India’s housing paradox: Empty houses and housing shortages
The Model Tenancy Act can improve rent control legislation and contract enforcement to bring vacant houses into the market.A moment 30 years ago that had been a year and a half in the making:...
Rakesh Mohan narrates how the logic-defying system of industrial controls was dismantled, and discusses policies required to deal with the emerging challenges of redeploying labour.There is a need for high taxes uniformly across all tobacco products
Higher taxes will work in tandem with greater controls, and will help GoI pay for all the direct and indirect costs it incurs due to tobacco consumption.India’s Housing Vacancy Paradox: How rent control and weak contract...
How rent control and weak contract enforcement produce unoccupied units and a housing shortage at the same time.Pandemic exposed the existing societal framework as unsustainable
We must ask what from 2020 should we reinforce, what must we rebuild and what should we tear down and build again?Post-COVID, lack of social security has made many migrants consider...
A stark manifestation of the two-track development of our socio-economic polity is the ubiquitous spread of digital technology.Breaking down Silos to improve the health of older adults: The case for...
The leading cause of injury for older Americans is falls in the home, resulting in more deaths than any other injury, as well as a significant portion of Medicare spending.Are slums more vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from Mumbai
India has been highly susceptible to the spread of pandemics. The 1918 pandemic caused devastation across the country, with an excess mortality of 4.5%. While a century has passed since then, the present conditions of dense living and a weak public healthcare system makes the possibility of the rapid spread of the ...The early days of a global pandemic: A timeline of COVID-19 spread and...
The COVID-19 pandemic has sent shockwaves throughout the global economy. Some economies have been affected more severely than others. It started with a few deaths in Wuhan, China, with the earliest reported case on November 17, 2019. By December 31, 2019, when the Chinese authorities first reported it to the World Health ...COVID-19 | Does India have enough doctors? An analysis of growing COVID-19...
Coronavirus cases are quickly increasing across the globe, with just 580 reported cases (on January 22, 2020), in the span of a few weeks, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases have increased to over half a million across the world. The surge in coronavirus cases has crippled health systems in many ...COVID-19 | Is India’s health infrastructure equipped to handle an...
With growing number of coronavirus cases in India (and worldwide), policymakers have sprung into action – more information is being disseminated about preventive measures such as hand washing and not touching the face. Social distancing has been suggested as a tool to “flatten the curve”, or in other words, prevent the health ...Mobility and tenure choice in urban India
This paper considers the impact that the shrinking rental sector has had on the opportunities for Indians to migrate.Medicines in India: Accessibility, affordability and quality
Healthcare expenditure is financed through various sources in a country. It can be financed by the government (state or union), insurance schemes (public or private) or borne by households directly in the form of out-of-pocket expenditures (OOPE). More financing by the government implies less financial burden on households in the form of ...Reviving Higher Education in India
This paper examines enrolment trends, graduation and employment patterns and the quality of Higher Education Institutions in India.Performance of the Supreme Court and tenure of Chief Justices of India: An...
This is a tentative and an exploratory analysis to assess the productivity of the Supreme Court of India (SC) under different Chief Justices of India (CJI) in terms of accomplished adjudications, which is its core function. In particular, we study the number of judgements passed by the apex court per day during ...Women’s Reservation Bill: What can India learn from other countries?
Globally, women remain vastly underrepresented in local and national politics. As of 2018, according to the Inter Parliamentary Union, only 24%[i] of parliamentarians are women. Can public policy, in general, and affirmative action, in particular, result in political inclusion of women? Data from the International Institute for Democratic and Electoral Assistance, Stockholm ...India’s biggest challenge: The future of farming
India has enough food; does it have too many people working in agriculture? The country needs a different set of solutions for agriculture and for those working the land.The persistence of memory: The burden of Alzheimer’s disease in...
Between 2001 and 2011, India’s elderly population increased from 70 million to 104 million (Census estimates). In 2011, the population over 60 years of age comprised 8.6% of the total population. With falling population growth rates this share is only expected to increase further in the coming decades. As the population ages, ...Women’s Political Participation and Development
On July 29th, 2019, Brookings India hosted Sonia Bhalotra for a Development Seminar on Women’s Political Participation and Development. She presented two co-authored papers, “Women Legislators and Economic Performance” (2018)[1] and “Maternal Mortality and Women’s Political Participation” (2018)[2]. The two discussants for the event were Atishi, leader of Aam Aadmi Party and a ...Assessing gender in the North East
On July 19, 2019, Brookings India hosted a Development Seminar on gender in the North East, under its Property Rights Initiative and Gender Secretariat Initiative, which is a platform for developing and discussing research that fuels impact on policy related to gender in India. Patricia Mukhim, veteran journalist and editor of Shillong ...Missing women patients: Gender discrimination in access to healthcare
Gender discrimination in access to healthcare has not been systematically studied in India or many other developing countries. This is primarily due to a lack of reliable data. In this paper, we use extensive data collected on clinical appointments from a large public-funded tertiary care hospital with a robust hospital information system ...The promise of impact investing in India
Achieving the ambitious sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030 will take an estimated $5 to $7 trillion per year, with a financing gap of $2.5 trillion in developing countries.In India alone, the outsize challenge has been translated into a financing gap of $565 billion. While the country has seen huge progress ...India 2024: Policy priorities for the new government
A changing global order, energy transitions and climate change and rapid technological advancement – India’s next government has the difficult task of steering the country through an interesting and crucial time. India 2024: Policy Priorities for the New Government, edited by Dhruva Jaishankar and Zehra Kazmi, is a compendium of policy briefs ...India 2024: An informed India
For years, governments, policymakers, and philanthropists have contributed funds for the delivery of social programs to achieve specific goals and development outcomes. These funds have been used to tackle poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and other critical policy issues. But while necessary, they have met varying degrees of success. Each year the government spends ...India 2024: An urban India
It is now widely recognised that India’s future will be urban. According to estimates by the United Nations’ World Urbanisation Prospects, India will see the highest increase in urban population in absolute numbers of any country. By 2050, it will add more people to its cities than are currently residing in them. ...India 2024: A highly educated India
India has seen a rapid expansion in the higher education sector since 2001. There has been a dramatic rise in the number of higher education institutions (HEI) and enrolment has increased four-fold. The Indian higher education system is now one of the largest in the world with 49,964 institutions. Despite the increased ...India 2024: A healthy India
India’s economy has grown at an impressive pace over the last few years, but overall, it still witnesses poor health outcomes. The wealth of a nation is its human capital and with poor health outcomes, India’s human capital will suffer. This has a direct consequence on the economic well-being of the nation. ...Why women candidates are more likely to run as independents
In a democratic polity, political representation is an inherent aspect of political participation. In this view, whether or not women are able to exercise political participation depends, to a large extent, on the terms of their inclusion and the extent to which the rules of the game enable or allow for their ...What India’s 65 million ‘missing women’ mean for the...
As the largest democracy in the world, India has boasted a consistent record of free and fair elections. A democratic government derives its legitimacy and power to implement policy from the “consent of the governed”. But if a significant chunk of the population is “missing”, does it reflect the true consent of ...Teenage girls in India: Aspirations and reality
There are 80 million teenage girls in India. A clear understanding of their current realities and their aspirations is essential in order to design effective policies for them. However, a key impediment for data-driven policy design, in order to address the needs of teenage girls in India, is the absence of any ...Early life exposure to outdoor air pollution: Effect on child health in...
Pollution in any form, whether it be air or water, poses an environmental risk to the health of the exposed population. Literature from both developing and developed nations indicates the adverse health effects that air (Soo and Pattnayak, 2019 & Chay and Greenstone, 2003) and water pollution (Brainerd and Menon, 2014) have ...Difficult Dialogues: A compendium of contemporary essays on gender...
Existing literature has documented a significant gender gap in various sectors including health, labour market opportunities, education and political representation in India. The objective of this compendium is to move the gender policy focus towards the underlying trends and causes of these gender gaps. In particular, we highlight three areas of interaction ...Accelerating financial inclusion in India
By making financial services accessible at affordable costs to all individuals and businesses, irrespective of net worth and size, financial inclusion strives to address and offer solutions to the constraints that exclude people from participating in the financial sector. Research shows thatcountries with deeper levels of financial inclusion defined as access to ...Too slow for the urban march: Litigations and real estate market in...
India is urbanising and putting increasing pressure on urban land and there is growing impetus to convert land from agriculture to non-agriculture use. According to the United Nations (2015), India will see the largest increase of all countries in urban population by 2050. Efficient functioning of urban land markets will be critical ...Increasing private practitioner engagement with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that is most prevalent in South Asia. It is caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis and primarily affects the lungs. A small fraction of infected individuals develop symptoms and the capability of transmission. In 2015, India accounted for 2.2 million of the 9 million tuberculosis cases in ...Is India ready to JAM?
The Indian government’s JAM trinity comprises three components: Jan Dhan bank account, Aadhaar unique identity number and mobile phone. A combination of these three elements is seen as the pathway to implementing large-scale direct benefit transfers in India. The Jan Dhan Ayojana (Peoples’ Wealth Scheme) is a government scheme that aims to ...Why health doesn’t get the media attention it deserves
Shamika Ravi spoke at The Media Rumble about making health political and democratised. “No country can develop on the back of poor human capital.”Using technology to improve the efficacy of school feeding programmes
Heralded as the world’s largest school feeding programme, the Mid-Day Meal Programme in India reaches out to over 120 million children in over 1.26 million schools. State governments, along with funding from the national government, supply free lunches to children in primary and upper primary classes on working days in government schools. ...The ascent of Artificial Intelligence: How will AI change the...
Do machines make mistakes? How often and at what cost? When can we truly trust machines? From SIRI to self-driving cars, Google’s search algorithms to autonomous weapons and drones, the past few decades have witnessed some of the fastest, almost meteoric, rises in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Today, as different nation-states make choices ...Artificial intelligence and data analytics in India
Advances in artificial intelligence and data analytics are propelling innovation in many parts of the world.[1] China, for example, has committed $150 billion towards its goal of becoming a world leader by 2030.[2] And while the United States government is investing only $1.1 billion in non-classified AI research, its private sector is ...Brookings India consortium brings together researchers analysing National...
The National Family Health Survey 2015-16 conducted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare provides information at an individual, household, district, state, and country level about various metrics related to health. The survey’s 800,000+ household observations are appropriately weighted by the International Institute of Population Sciences to provide accurate statistics at ...Regulating a Digital Economy: An Indian Perspective
The “fourth industrial revolution” which has been characterised by end-to-end digitalisation has led to unprecedented increases in connectivity and data flows. By 2017, Asia had the largest number of internet users in the world, with 1.9 billion people online. Joshua Meltzer, Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution, spoke ...What India can do to build, bridge and bolster digital trust
There are more mobile phones than people on this planet, Facebook now has 2 billion monthly users, and over 93 per cent of India’s adult population now has access to a unique Aadhaar identity. With critical data pools lying with governments and social media networking sites, building, bridging and bolstering trust in ...Is the National Health Protection Scheme good public policy?
India recently announced an ambitious plan called the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) to provide government-sponsored insurance to roughly 500 million people or nearly 40% of India’s population. Since the announcement, there has been much debate about two issues. First, does this plan make sense? Second, if it is a good idea, ...With the incursion of fake news, here’s what Facebook could do to...
Facebook has a world of problems. Beyond charges of Russian manipulation and promoting fake news, the company’s signature social media platform is under fire for being addictive, causing anxiety and depression, and even instigating human rights abuses. Company founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to win back users’ trust. But ...Here’s how opening up the gender gap in internet usage would create...
We have all heard about a gap when it comes to participation of women in the tech industry. Facebook, Google, and Apple have 17%, 19% and 23% women in their technology staffs, respectively. Multiple surveys, such as the “The Elephant in the Valley,” have documented systematic discrimination against women. And there’s a ...Even Nobel economists make ignoble mistakes
I try to teach people to make fewer mistakes,” said the newly-minted economics Nobel laureate, Richard Thaler, in an interview earlier this week. “We need to take full account of the fact that people are busy, they’re absent-minded, they’re lazy.” Congratulations to Professor Thaler; I think his brilliantly accessible work is part ...India reforms health: A compendium of writings
Restructuring the Medical Council of India to eliminate corruption By Shamika Ravi NITI Aayog has proposed replacing the compromised Medical Council of India with a new National Medical Commission (NMC), outlined in a draft Bill known as the National Medical Commission Bill of 2016. We look into this proposed Bill, refer to ...The need for reforms in healthcare finance
The Centre and state governments are experimenting with several new and exciting ideas in healthcare reforms. What is missing, however, is a serious reform agenda for health financing. The last big reform was expanding the coverage of the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) from Rs30,000 to Rs1 lakh, reinforcing insurance as the ...Who knew healthcare was so complex
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors Of Socialism. NITI Aayog’s recommendation to improve access, reduce out-of-pocket expenditure, create infrastructure and augment capacity at district hospitals for non-communicable diseases (NCDs), ...What Uttar Pradesh tells us about health infrastructure
The death of children in the recent Gorakhpur tragedy has drawn significant attention towards the state of public health institutions in Uttar Pradesh (UP). While much of the focus remained only on Gorakhpur, our analysis shows that within the state, the public health infrastructure is far worse than Gorakhpur in most districts. ...Restructuring the Medical Council of India to eliminate corruption
The Medical Council of India (MCI) has been repeatedly criticized for providing opaque accreditation to aspiring medical colleges in India. Many of its members have been accused of taking bribes in order to fast-track accreditation. Bribes reduce the legitimacy of all accredited colleges and thereby compromise medical college quality overall in the ...Restructuring the Medical Council of India
The National Medical Commission Bill looks to create a National Medical Commission (NMC) to replace the currently existing and extremely corrupt Medical Council of India. This new body would be responsible for the accreditation of all medical education institutions within the country as well as maintaining a national registrar of all certified allopathic medical practitioners. ...Missing Female Patients: An Analysis of Gender Ratios from a Tertiary Care...
Abstract The issue of missing women, which is excess mortality of females as seen in low population ratio of women to men, in developing countries was first highlighted in a landmark mark paper by Sen in 1990 and again in 2003. Anderson and Ray estimate suggests that among the stock of women alive ...Health Monitor
The Health Monitor brings together real-time data, research & powerful analytics of India’s healthcare sector on a common platform. It’s created using publicly available data from across all states & Union Territories. It enables researchers & policymakers to access, monitor and analyse real-time health measures at a highly disaggregated level. This Health ...Important lessons for the Smart Cities Mission
With the 26th UN-Habitat governing council conference (GC26) held last month, the new urban agenda (NUA) has once again come to the fore. As the world moves towards a globalized policy discourse, one wonders if the NUA is an improvement on the existing unratifiable global documents. India’s minister for urban development, Venkaiah ...Better data needed on job scenario
“There are lies, damned lies, and statistics,” the 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli famously said. Today, his description of questionable data may be applied, somewhat facetiously, to Indian labour statistics. The problem is not that they are “fake”, but rather that they give only a partial and sometimes inaccurate view ...Advancing cooperation in higher education
It is that time of the year when India struggles to meet the educational expectations of its youth. An increasing number of school graduates are enrolling in college but the shortage of quality institutions has led to unreasonable entrance requirements. Despite recent visa restrictions, the US remains a favoured destination for resourceful ...Why EVMs are win-win
Free and fair elections to choose political representatives are a cornerstone of a democracy, and a fundamental human right of people. Voting procedures play a significant role in the conduct of free and fair elections in a democracy: These convert voters’ preferences into a political mandate, which forms the basis for policy ...The impact of Electronic Voting Machines on electoral frauds, democracy,...
Free and fair elections are cornerstones of democracy. In India, electronic voting machines (EVMs) were introduced with the objective of reducing electoral fraud. We exploit the phased roll-out of the EVMs in state assembly elections to study its impact on electoral fraud, democracy, and development. Our main findings are: Introductions of EVMs ...Gender issues in India: an amalgamation of research
Forty-two years have passed since the United Nations first decided to commemorate March 8th as International Women’s Day, marking a historical transition in the feminist movement. Gender remains a critically important and largely ignored lens to view development issues across the world. On this past occasion of International Women’s Day 2017, here ...What explains childhood violence?
Violence in childhood is a serious health, social and human rights concern globally, there is, however, little understanding about the factors that explain the various forms of violence in childhood. This paper uses data on childhood violence for 10,042 individuals from four countries. We report Odds Ratios from pooled logit regression analysis ...Women and representative governance in India
Brookings India Senior Fellow Shamika Ravi recently presented glimpses of her work on women and representative governance in India to a group of students from New York University. Dr. Ravi presented her research through three main perspectives namely, governance, representation and potential solutions. Her research has been inspired by the ‘missing women’ ...A tradeoff between growth and social objectives exists for microfinance...
Senior Fellow Shamika Ravi was a panellist at the 5th Plenary of Day 2 at the Inclusive Finance India Summit 2016, held on December 6, 2016. Shamika Ravi described why most microcredit borrowers are women. She shared a story of the Grameen Bank from a gender perspective. When Grameen Bank started, 40 ...The fight against hidden hunger: targeting the first 1000 days of a...
India faces an invisible public health crisis in the form of widespread maternal and child undernutrition. One-third of Indian women (of reproductive age) are undernourished, and close to 60 million children (under five years of age) are at risk, that is, they are either stunted (low height-for-age) or wasted (low weight-for-height). Women ...Demonetisation push to labour reforms: molding the future of the markets
Demonetisation has the potential to facilitate an environment that will develop a formal culture in India’s labour markets Among the loudest critics of the demonetisation policy are those who predict doom for India’s informal sector as a result of this exogenous shock. Numerous anecdotes are being forwarded to highlight the suffering of ...Health and Morbidity in India (2004-2014)
The decade from 2004 to 2014 saw the Indian economy grow at an impressive rate. This was also the time when the government brought sweeping policy initiatives into the healthcare sector. New health schemes were introduced at the national level as well as state levels. After a decade of experimentation, India is still faced with ...The government’s ‘little mistakes’ can have a high cost
A relative passed away recently… or should I say in the future? See the official government death certificate issued, which shows a particular date. What do you interpret that date as? In India, as we follow the British system, most people would interpret this as 9 December, 2016 (09/12/16). But she passed ...Nutrition in India: Targeting the First 1,000 Days of a Child’s Life
Notwithstanding the sizeable economic and social gains made by India over the last two decades, the pernicious, often invisible, challenge of maternal and child undernutrition remains a national public health concern. This undermines the assumption that economic growth is in itself a sufficient condition for improvement in public health. India is home ...Municipal bond market could be the answer to financing woes of Smart...
As India considers more flexible and reliable ways of paying for the improvement of smart cities, the largely untapped municipal bond market can serve as a significant source of financial capital. As India continues to experience rapid urban expansion, public and private leaders at the national, state and local level are looking at ...Building Smart Cities in India: Allahabad, Ajmer, and Visakhapatnam
As India continues to experience rapid urban expansion, public and private leaders at a national, state, and local level are looking into ways to better manage larger populations and unlock greater economic potential. Launched under Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015, the “Smart Cities Mission” is an ambitious multiyear effort to boost ...For smart cities to succeed, strengthening local governance is a must
The lack of effective devolution of power to local governments is a major bottleneck in the essential transformation of urban India. India is in the midst of an ‘urban revolution,’ but the current state of municipal services across the country is found wanting. According to Census 2011, 31.16 per cent of the Indian population (377 ...India-US relations: Higher education
Over the past decade, college tuition fees in the United States have skyrocketed, making it extremely difficult for average Americans to invest in higher education. Within the same time frame, the country has fallen from being ranked number one in college degree attainment to number 12 globally. The rising costs of higher ...The Urgent Need For India To Build A Design Economy
The “Make in India” initiative aims to create 100 million new jobs in the coming 10 years in the manufacturing sector and boost its contribution to GDP from 15% to 25%. (Globally, manufacturing accounts for 34% in Thailand, 32% in China, 31% in the Philippines, and 24% in Malaysia and Indonesia.) Yet, ...Updating Aadhaar for better privacy
Privacy with Aadhaar isn’t just an abstract issue, but related to the fundamental view of how data are to be accessed and used writes Rahul Tongia To its proponents, Unique Identification (UID, branded Aadhaar) is the solution to citizen empowerment. To its opponents, UID is a violation of not only citizen privacy ...Next step in PM Jan Dhan Yojana is to help people start using their new...
A recent article in Global Government Forum quotes a Brookings India research paper on financial inclusion which calls for a model of financial inclusion which specifically caters to the need of the poor. (Global Government Forum is a publishing, events and research business that helps civil servants around the world to meet global challenges by building their expertise, ...Tie women’s reservation bill to sex ratio of constituency
Our existing political system is unlikely to throw up solutions for deep rooted gender inequality. The Women’s Reservation Bill has been doing rounds of the Indian Parliament in various forms since 1996 failing each time to pass. While we celebrate International Women’s Day, as a stroke of remarkable irony there is yet another 15-year-old girl, raped ...Paper | Building a Design Economy in India
In this paper, we outline the manner in which design can help promote the Indian economy. We look at the status of design in India, review the country’s development challenges, discuss the opportunities of a design economy, and make recommendations to enhance design in India. Highlights of Main Findings India’s design capacity ...Women who rose to the top and shattered stereotypes
Skard harbours the belief that it is women at the very top who make any sort of substantial change, but in India women have performed leadership roles even at the panchayat level writes Shamika Ravi In Women of Power, Skard examines ‘Half a century of female presidents and prime ministers worldwide’, and ...The Data Is Unambiguous: The Odd-Even Policy Failed To Lower Pollution In...
The Delhi government’s two-week-long odd-even rule ended on 15 January, with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announcing that the plan will return in a revised form in the near future. There have been several commentaries and opinions on this policy in the national and local media, while ordinary citizens have enjoyed some side ...Support research as corporate social responsibility in India
India must build a culture of knowledge creation by fostering public support for research. Research is like defence, a pure public good which the private sector can directly support only in limited ways. There are no sustainable market solutions for research, the government therefore should provide the necessary support for this. Research is ...Priorities for India’s health policy
India’s health care sector is poised at a crossroads, and the direction taken now will be critical in determining its trajectory for years to come. In a recent Brookings India paper on the Indian government’s health care policy, Shamika Ravi and Rahul Ahluwalia argue that it should prioritize expanding and effectively delivering those aspects ...Delhi’s odd-even policy unsustainable
There is tremendous interest in the new experiment that Delhi government is running on the roads of the national capital. To complement efforts at curbing the number of cars, there is a barrage of advertisements on local radio extolling the virtue of sharing rides. It immediately makes you wonder: Why aren’t the ...Report | Priorities for India’s National health policy
One of India’s fundamental failings as a modern nation has been our inability to get successive governments to prioritize and deal with public goods. Public goods (as against private goods) have non-rival and non-excludable consumption which makes pricing difficult. This in turn makes their provision through the market mechanism tricky and hence ...Chennai floods: A ‘Smart City’ must also be a ‘Resilient...
One of the most important ambitions of modern India is the 100 smart cities project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. We want to make our cities smarter by using IT and digital infrastructure, by managing our energy and water use and by creating an intelligent transport network. In the midst of all ...Smart city initiatives should recognise differences between Indian cities
Indian smart city efforts need to recognise the economic differences between its cities. Off-the-shelf technology solutions are not viable Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bold commitment to build 100 smart cities throughout India is a worthy centrepiece of his urban agenda. The promise of this tech-savvy approach is greater livability, sustainability and improved ...Over the past two decades, every fifth suicide in India is by a housewife
The most disturbing trend to emerge out of the National Crime Record Bureau data is that consistently for over 2 decades, every fifth suicide in India is by a housewife. And though significant in numbers, farmer suicides, in comparison are a much smaller fraction. But more encouragingly, while farmer suicides have witnessed ...Depression drives maximum farmers to suicide, not debt, finds Brookings...
Depression, and not debts, is responsible for the decades-long tragedy of farmer suicides in Maharashtra, said a paper by an American think-tank after analysing suicide-related information provided by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The paper, written by Brookings Institution India fellow and Indian School of Business Professor Shamika Ravi, held illnesses ...Why inequality needs a radical agenda
INEQUALITY: WHAT CAN BE DONE? Anthony B Atkinson HARVARD BUSINESS; Pages 400, Rs 1,250 Inequality is back in fashion, thanks to Thomas Piketty. Yet, before Mr Piketty, there was Tony Atkinson, his teacher, who has been at the forefront of research on the topic since the 1960s. Over the last few years, ...Narendra Modi’s class act on Teachers’ Day
But the challenge in education lies in enabling teachers to innovate and individualise pedagogy. Key takeaways from the Brookings India publication, Accelerating Access to Education If you would like to request a copy of the book please email us on info@brookingsindia.org In his second address to students around the country, Prime Minister Narendra ...Health care – how, where & how much?
In my previous column, I wrote about some patterns emerging from the National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO’s) household survey on expenditure on education. The same round also queried expenditure on health by households. This column explores some findings from the 71st Round survey of social expenditures by households, carried out between January ...CSR: Corporates Should Reach out
India Inc can no longer limit its CSR involvement to the new Companies Act. It has to forge partnerships with the beneficiary community. Corporates have scrambled to meet their corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations under the new Companies Act, 2013. This is not a surprise, as most companies have not regarded CSR ...Women voters can tip the scales in Bihar
This column first appeared in The Hindu, on July 28, 2015. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. As all political parties pull up their socks before the Bihar elections, they must recognise ...Educational reach and grasp
This column first appeared in Business Standard, on July 26, 2015. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. Over the past few weeks, new data releases have provided a wealth of information about ...India’s Suicide Problem
For over a decade, farmer suicides in India has been a serious public policy concern. More recently, this has led to a shrill media outcry and much politicking. The government response to the crisis of farmer suicide has mostly been simplistic and sometimes aggravating. The main issue with offering “special packages” to ...Think Beyond Health Insurance
Budget 2015 was creative on several dimensions but fresh thinking was completely missing in health financing. This budget, like several in the past, reinforced insurance as the strategy for health financing in India. As the experience of many countries has revealed, this is a perilous path which will take India towards an ...A reality check on suicides in India
In this paper, we study the data from the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) of India and disaggregate across demographic and leading causes of suicides. We find that mental and physical health are the leading causes of suicides in India (20%) while the often cited factor, indebtedness, causes significantly lower number of ...The inclusion project
A little more than a week ago, World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for launching the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), which he called an “extraordinary effort” at financial inclusion. According to the Union finance ministry, India has attained 99 per cent financial inclusion, measured as households’ ...Band-aid solutions for health problems
The Draft National Health Policy of 2015 released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, is a comprehensive document. So comprehensive, in fact, that it says too little by saying too much. A National Heath Policy is commonly read as a political statement which is meant to provide ...Intellectual Property Rights: Signs of Convergence
The Pre-Summit Backdrop Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) have been among the most contentious economic issues in the bilateral relationship between India and the United States. For several years, the U.S. has claimed that the Indian regulatory regime has been both weak and inadequately enforced. In a number of IPR domains, the contention ...Workfare as an effective way to fight poverty: The MNREGA
This article first appeared in Ideas for India, on December 11, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are those of the author. While developed countries are increasingly leaning on workfare programmes as a means to reduce ...Developing SAARC’s Higher Education Potential
Education is a powerful medium to unleash the potential of the SAARC region by cutting poverty and promoting development. It can also be an instrument of soft power for a nation like India by raising its cultural and political, especially democratic, attractiveness for others. With rapid globalization and expanding communication technology, India ...SAARC and India’s Healthcare Opportunities
Less than one fifth of all international tourists to India are from the SAARC countries. Yet, more than half of all foreigners who visit India for medical treatments are from SAARC countries. Together the two statistics imply that while India gains a lot more from rest of the world in the tourism ...Turning Water Challenges into Opportunities
Water is vital in South Asia, where most countries are still largely agrarian. As such, water is inherently political – its socio-ecological flows are implicated in competition by economies, individuals and nations, while its distributional regimes have the capacity to alter lives and livelihoods. Competing water-use for agriculture, industry, and domestic purposes ...The three components of livelihood security: jobs, skills and safety nets
(Remarks made in the ASSOCHAM Livelihoods Security Summit on November 3, 2014) Let me begin by expressing my appreciation for ASSOCHAM’s initiatives in furthering debate and understanding on the very critical issue of livelihoods. The theme for this seminar addresses a very important aspect of an overall strategy, i.e. security. Secure livelihoods ...Strengthening India-U.S. Relations through Higher Education
Over the last 20 years, we have witnessed an explosion of aspiration among the Indian youth, who are also among the biggest supporters of Prime Minister Modi. Access to quality higher education is the launchpad for the realization of those aspirations and dreams of young India. College and university education, however, remain ...Intellectual Property Rights: An eminent domain approach for India and the...
Intellectual property rights (IPR) are a significant point of contention between India and the United States. India is on the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) IPR priority watch list, indicated in the Special 301 Report for 2014, which signals heightened scrutiny and, from India’s perspective, the threat of sanctions. The ...Making it work
The MGNREGS stands out as one of the Indian government’s most ambitious social schemes, with far-reaching consequences throughout the economy. The only known recipe for poverty eradication is a combination of high growth and high development spending. Neither is sufficient. A recent study (Kapoor and Ahluwalia, 2012) has shown that post-liberalisation, one ...For new ideas, a clean break with the past
The Planning Commission is neither a constitutional nor a statutory body, but over the years it has acquired tremendous power of distant planning which is unsuitable to a country as diverse and complex as India. Let us neither reinvent nor restructure such a body. Let us, instead, make a clean break and ...Why So Few Women in Politics? Evidence from India
In this paper, the authors analyze women as political candidates in Indian democracy. Using 50 years of assembly elections data at the constituency level from the Indian states, they show that women are more likely to contest elections in those constituencies where gender ratio of the electors is less in favor of ...Missing women leaders
Women constitute a quarter of Narendra Modi’s cabinet, even though they make up only a little over 11 per cent of the 16th Lok Sabha. This is significant, even internationally. In South America, for instance, women hold the same proportion of Cabinet positions, but the proportion of women in the lower houses ...What Drives Entrepreneurship? Some Evidence from India
This paper studies the growth of entrepreneurship in India by analyzing the micro, small and medium enterprises sector (MSME) and explores the factors that contribute to its development. The author analyzes a panel data of all 35 states and union territories from 1991 until 2006. The outcomes of interest are number of ...Beginning a new conversation on women
A focus on women citizens Riding on the aspirations of an electorate, Modi’s arrival into Delhi is commonly seen as a vote for development. Women are a significant share of that electorate with fundamentally distinct concerns. The last few weeks’ horrific reminder of how India publically consumes violence against women, in conjunction ...A potential jobs breakthrough
The announcement by the Rajasthan government that it would amend the state’s labour laws to give employers in the manufacturing sector the flexibility to lay off workers without prior government approval is an extremely significant development. The plan is to raise the ceiling under which such approval is not needed from 100 workers to 300. This ...Why less ladies in the Lok Sabha
Gender inequality is a serious concern in most sectors but the gap between men and women has narrowed the least in political representation. Women make up merely 22% of lower houses in parliaments around the world and in India, this number is less than half at 10.8% in the outgoing Lok Sabha. ...Working Paper: Women in Party Politics
Introduction: The Women’s Reservation Bill – which proposes to reserve 33 per cent of seats in Parliament and State Legislative Assemblies for women – has been doing the rounds of the Indian Parliament in various forms since it was first introduced by the Deve Gowda government in 1996, failing each time, to ...Slippery Slope for Infrastructure
By now, all of us are used to global rankings of various kinds placing India close to the bottom of a large set of countries. Whether it is ease of doing business or corruption or transparency or human development or infrastructure quality, whenever a new ranking is announced, one instinctively begins searching ...India’s Missing Women
Even though fair elections are held at regular intervals for State Assemblies and Parliament, they do not reflect the true consent of the people because a large number of women are missing from the electorate On her arrival in India recently, the words of Gloria Steinem, American feminist and leader of the ...The alpha male syndrome
Behaviour traits of primates can be positive or negative for governance The institution of the alpha male is common to several species, including virtually all primates. At any given time, one male dominates the group, which, among other things, gives him the exclusive right to reproduce. When an incumbent alpha shows signs of weakening, ...Slow burn
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is in the process of putting out its fifth series of assessment reports. There are three components in this series. The report on the first component – science – was released at the end of September. The other two – impacts and mitigation – will be ...